


The Dreaming Reality of What Was Left (Inside and Beside Her)

by MistyBeethoven



Series: "Yes, I Really Am This Pathetic!" or "How to Say I Love You With a Story" [58]
Category: The Matrix (Movies)
Genre: BBW, Canonical Character Death, Consensual Somnophilia, Deception, Dreams vs. Reality, F/M, Future, Goodbye Sex, Goodbyes, Last Kiss, Last Requests, Lies, Love, Love Stories, Machines, Man & Machine, Manipulation, Mankind, Messiah | Messiahs, Mind Manipulation, Non-Linear Narrative, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Overweight, Pods, Post-Apocalypse, Pregnancy, Prophecies, Prophecy, Reunions, Romance, Sacrifice, Science Fiction, Self-Indulgent, Self-Insert, Self-Sacrifice, Sequel, Sex, Somnophilia, Stasis, Wishes, playing god
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 10:22:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 32,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25469245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistyBeethoven/pseuds/MistyBeethoven
Summary: Set during "The Matrix: Reloaded" and "The Matrix: Revolutions."And after it too.After the defeat of Agent Smith and the truce between Man and Machines, The Architect visits the Oracle to learn how she manipulated the sixth One into becoming the true One and the reason for what he perceives as the corruption of his own programming.Meanwhile, Neo's heretofore unknown final two requests of the Deus Ex Machina are recounted, both involving the woman he loved, lost and left behind in the world of the Matrix.Sequel to "Keep on Dreaming" & "The Dream of Her Leaving."
Relationships: Agent Smith (The Matrix) & Me, The Architect & Sati (The Matrix), The Architect/The Oracle (The Matrix), The Oracle & Sati (The Matrix), Thomas Anderson | Neo & Deus Ex Machina, Thomas Anderson | Neo & The Oracle, Thomas Anderson | Neo/Me, Thomas Anderson | Neo/Trinity
Series: "Yes, I Really Am This Pathetic!" or "How to Say I Love You With a Story" [58]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1589944
Comments: 32
Kudos: 14





	1. The Question of How, Not of Why

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone! Came up with this shortly after finishing "The Dream of Her Leaving." Honestly, I cannot thank you enough anyone that left comments for that tale and read it. They meant more to me than you will ever know. I am so happy you enjoyed it and I can only hope this will be a good follow up and you will like it too.
> 
> I would have gifted this to several readers but since it will be explicit I wasn't sure about it.
> 
> Sorry for the long, possibly odd title. I'm trying to fill in for Phillip K. Dick until he gets back. ;D <3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Architect visits the Oracle.

_**Prologue: Two-gether** _

_Two bodies._

_Two sleeps._

_The man holds the woman in his arms, tightly, as if he were afraid by loosening the embrace he has on her she will be pulled into her dream and be lost to him forever._

_The woman holds the man just as close to her own body, as if equally afraid if she lets go even once, he will be taken from her and she will be alone._

_Sometimes a red eye will come and stare at them in confusion, the sound of metal feet on glass not unknown in the power plant but the cause of it this time unique and not expected. At other times, several sets of red eyes will come to gaze at the man and woman holding on to each other, thinking if they stare long enough that maybe the equation of it will fall into place and they can break it down into a simple code and not be left feeling confused and odd by the sight and the strange sensation it leaves within their programming. They stare and process, record and analyze, trying to make sense of the image and the final request for this of all thing from the one whom saved them._

_All that ever remains to them, however, is the sight of a dead man holding the living woman they are keeping both alive and dreaming._

**_Chapter One: The Question of How, Not of Why_ **

"You have never visited her here before to my recollection. She will be most pleased," Seraph told the new visitor to his mistress and showed him in through the front door.

The Architect walked into the Oracle's apartment in his while suit and expensive and well polished loafers and looked around the room with a visible smirk on his handsome yet older face. He still found it distasteful that he had felt compelled to meet his opposing program inside of her own home. Something seemed too personal about it, as if they were two old lovers about to meet each other once again instead of two ancient programs inside of a world of codes, energy and wires. He would fear the other programs talking behind their backs about the whole affair if he held no control over them as their Architect.

A park bench was far more acceptable for it was someplace public and neutral inside of the world they helped to maintain, each on their opposite sides of balance and imbalance. It was fair in its way, neither belonging to one or the other, which pleased him in no small way. But here she held the upper hand and would, no doubt, gloat to herself endlessly about it. It was her personal place to compute the facts of the Matrix and the power balance was thrown off disturbingly here, with its air of hominess and other such human trappings. But that was what the Oracle did: unbalance things. How such a program could ever exist inside the world he had constructed still equally unnerved him. He quickly placed the blame of the need for it on the same humans she mimicked and adored. It _was_ usually their fault, after all, irrational creatures such as they were.

Going to see the Oracle at her home, suggested that he needed her in some way and that she held more power over him in this instant than he held over her.  
But she _was_ the one holding the power not him.  
For when did the Architect have need for an Oracle anyway? Did he not see the design in the blueprints he had created? It was a fact that frustrated even him and he would have countered and decimated the choice, staying in his cold, emotionless room, if something had not seemed to have gone horribly wrong inside of the Matrix following the momentary truce between man and machine. Now he desired to see into the past to find out where things had gone off the rails, as the Trainman would say and how the Oracle had managed to orchestrate it against his will.

Why this sudden desire had taken hold of his thoughts was another act of imbalance.

As if to further accentuate the control the woman had in the situation, the Architect was told by Seraph to wait inside of the room to see the Oracle even though there seemed to be no other people waiting for an audience with the prophetess. The man in the white suit sat down, disregarding his irritation, a hand resting on each of his knees and finding the chair in which he sat neither comfortable nor uncomfortable.

When a program in the guise of young girl of Indian descent came out of the Oracle's kitchen carrying a black cat in her thin arms, the Architect did not bother to even glance at her. She approached him, however, as if his indifference itself attracted her.

"This is my cat," the girl said.

"That is a cat that you found," the Architect contradicted flatly.

"It is my cat now," the girl smiled and petted the back of the feline's head. "Would you like to hold him?"

"No."

"That is your choice," the girl said adopting an air of wisdom which exceeded the appearance of her age.

"Now do you know why you did not want to hold him?"

The Architect turned and stared blankly at the girl. She was staring at him as if she was happy with the question and he understood that she had been too long in the presence of her guardian, the Oracle. The woman's superior air of pompastic pretension was corrupting her programming. "I did not want to hold him because I did not come here to hold a cat," he replied and then turned away.

"Why did you come here?" the child inquired, placing the cat down and sitting in the seat next to him.

The man in the white suit watched the cat with the black fur run off and suddenly wished he could follow it.

"That is between the Oracle and myself," the Architect stated, casting a glance at the beads dangling in the doorway which separated him from his true destination. "What is she doing?"

"She's waiting for the cookies to finish baking," the girl whispered as she leaned over conspiratorially. "You can never keep them in too long or the bottoms burn."

Being made to wait so cookie would not burn, the Architect felt his patience having reached its end. He stood and headed towards the door when Seraph appeared, his slanted eyes almost twinkling in amusement. "She is ready for you now."

The Architect stood and walked towards the kitchen the smell of chocolate chips wafting to his nostrils which processed them for the first time with something close to hunger. He pushed it to the side and walked through the beads.

"Now this is an honor," the Oracle greeted him in her usual warm way, a tray of cookies in her oven mitted hand. The Architect thought he could tell from the slight lilt to her voice at its edge that she was secretly gloating and that the opposite was what was really true: that _he_ should be honored to be able to see her. "Do you want one?" she asked holding out the tray.

"No."

"They're best when they come right out," she said with a patronizing, pitying smile. If you decide you want one later you'll regret it."

"No. I will not want one later."

The Oracle placed the tray down on the counter and grabbing a cookie took a bite from it. "Sit."

"No," the Architect denied the offer.

"You'll regret that choice too," she replied.

The man stayed standing but stumbled when soon after the young girl from the waiting room bumped into him on her way to the tray of freshly baked cookies.

"Sati," the Oracle said reprovingly. "What would your father want you to say?"

The girl, this Sati, looked apologetic. "Sorry," she said to the Architect and then turned to the older woman. "He wouldn't hold my cat."

"He wouldn't take a cookie or sit down either," the Oracle told her and the two female programs giggled with each other. The Architect looked at them both with the same amount of fondness he had shown to the cat.

Sati skipped on by him and the Architect refused to either look at her or move out of the way.

Taking another bite of the cookie in her hand, the Oracle placed it suddenly down on the counter and brushed away the crumbs which had fallen on both it and herself.

"So how do you like this new world of ours?" she asked wiping several crumbs off from her chest.

"I do not like it," the "Architect replied. "I find it a place of chaos. The rules have changed. I am finding it difficult to see how this is any better or worse than the system we left behind."

The Oracle looked at him with her damned pity again as she poised her hand to swipe the last crumb away. "You know they have a saying about that?"

"And what would that be?" the Architect asked.

"That's the way the cookie crumbled," she said with a wink as she brushed the tiny particle of cookie on to the floor.

Turning away in annoyance, the man found his eyes resting on the skyline outside. He thought of the people living in the buildings, going about their lives with a new level of awareness and how some were not there anymore, having chosen to wake up and go to Zion, the human settlement on the outside he had been forced to save due to one man's nonsensical sacrifice. He thought of how he wished things had remained the same as with the previous five incarnations of the One and recoiled in frustration continually over how the sixth One, Thomas "Neo" Anderson, had spoilt everything by deviating from the set pattern which had existed and worked for generations to reboot the Matrix. The Anomally was meant to, at least, follow the plan laid out for him. That this particular man had broken free from the design by making choices that still confounded him was also one of the primary reasons the Architect knew he had come to see the woman whom had played the dead man's guide for the last few months of his life.

"The same can be said about truces and peace," the Matrix's creator said as he met her eyes once again.

"Everything has its end," the Oracle shrugged. "And you're here to understand more about how we arrived at that particular one, am I right?"

The Architect nodded, seeing no point in prolonging the big reveal for the reason behind his visit. The woman knew it already anyway.

"Now I must say I am excited," the female program said folding her arms. "Choosing to understand the events of the past. Usually you are so into just countering the acts of the present and future. Looking for answers isn't really your thing. I'm proud of you. Care to tell me what changed?"

She was playing the role of mother again and the Architect found himself welcoming it when previously he hadn't. It was a fact that disturbed him even more than being asked a question she already knew the answer to.

"No," he replied, not falling for her trap. He had to remain focused on the mystery he had come here to see more clearly. These small, coy games she often played had little importance in the end. It was the bigger one she had managed to finally win which infuriated and fascinated him in equal turns. There had been no victories in the past war between man and machine, only a series of stalemates. Now he was longing to comprehend how she had managed to turn a false messiah into the real thing and upset all he had tried so hard to maintain. "You played a dangerous game against me, against the Matrix, the way it has existed for centuries. You have brought change to our world with little thought to proper balance and systematic order. You had never managed to succeed in this before...though you have tried. What was different? How did you manage to manipulate things in between taking a drag from your cigarette and taking cookies out from the oven in time so the bottoms did not burn?"

There was a look of sorrow that the Architect had never seen before which crossed the Oracle's face. She suddenly looked old to him, as if her smile and warmness had been the trick she used to keep the truth of her real age at bay. In that one moment she looked as old and white as he was and he had a flash of understanding and epiphany: The woman had managed to beat him by allowing herself to become _like_ him, her opposite, for a few minutes of time.

And it brought her no joy.

"I told that poor boy once when he came to see me, right near the end, that I wanted to end the war just like he did...that I was willing to go as far as he was to get it. And I did. They all thought I told them what they needed to hear. Truth was, I told them what _I_ needed them to hear the whole time. Give yourself a name like the Oracle...make a few correct prophecies. Well, human nature being like it is, you can lead any old sheep to the altar for its sacrifice."

Reading her sadness, thinking of himself and the lengths he had gone to create and perserve his beautiful yet frustrating Matrix, the Architect found himself with a new appreciation for his opposing program and a sudden curiosity as to how low she had let herself fall and imitate him in her goal of bringing a momentary peace between the machines and the humans. His feet began to take him to the chair opposite to the Oracle's and he sat down across from her wondering why he should always feel somehow rattled and completed in her presence. If he existed to balance and she existed to lay waste to that, why should he feel as if the world became aligned just as long as he kept his eyes on her and his body was somewhere close to it too?

"And how did _you_ play God?" the Architect asked.

The woman placed a hand on the table and stared at the fingers at the end of it. Moving them about, her eyes lingered there as if she was pondering their designed ability to manipulate and control. When she looked up to meet his eyes again, the Oracle confessed in a casual tone which did not match the sorrow in her haunted eyes. "I brought two people together and let them fall in love so that then I could tear them both apart with a lie...

"Are you sure you don't want that cookie?"


	2. Vows and Togetherness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The girl whom was forced to abandon Thomas Anderson struggles in their separation until a certain rain shower brings her hope.

**_Before the Reconciliation of Man & Machine..._ **

Tom was _always_ with her.

Just as long as it rained.

Erin Kelly Smyth looked forward to those days when the weather called for a shower or an outright storm and delighted when the first drops signaling it began to fall against her window. Its force indicated its purpose, gentle enough to make it feel like it was helping to wash it clean or hitting it so violently that the sole intent of the rain's decent seemed to be destruction. Before the rain, whatever its condition, would usually only have seen her watching it from the other side of a pane of glass. Before, with a personality which was frightfully shy and her constant OCD mind raging its silent and invisible war inside of her damaged brain almost constantly, the woman had used the rain as an excuse to stay inside. These days, however, she always found herself leaving her cramped apartment so she could step out and greet it in person. The rain had become her only friend.

After Erin had knowingly made a decision that she knew would forever rob from her any chance of a future happiness, it had seemed to called out endlessly to her to come out and play.

In its downpour, she felt the cracks within her broken heart begin to be filled with something other than desperation, sorrow or loneliness. Memory was the glue which never lasted but succeeded in holding her heart together for a few moments and saved her from complete self destruction. But memory alone would have been worthless. What held the true power was the subject it was dedicated to: the man she had loved and had chosen to abandon despite the promise that in each other they would have found love and a fulfillment which blessed very few others.

But Thomas Anderson had not been a man alone, Erin had often contemplated sorrowfully and with pride in her dismal little apartment in the worst part of the city. If he had been she would blessedly never have willingly lost him. Instead the man had been a savior too, one created to save humanity from the slavery of a sleep she had only been given the briefest of glimpses into, and those only from the words of wiser souls than herself. But that was all she had ever really needed anyway. With her deeply spiritual mind, so strongly contrasted with her lover's own strongly agnostic beliefs, Erin's mind took to faith and belief like a bird took to the sky during the alloted time of migration. With the proper guiding, it had equally landed solely on the knowledge that her precious Tom could save the world if he wanted to. The choice would always be his own and he would always choose what was right, so was his basic decency. She had not doubted that fact even once when a man named Morpheus had stopped her on a busy street to first tell it to her or when he had brought her to a woman named the Oracle, whom had told her just the same.

What Erin had always had more trouble believing was when the woman had claimed that Tom and she would have been perfectly happy together in a world the Oracle had also claimed was false. That in this seemingly innocent act of being together, she would prevent Thomas Anderson from becoming the One, merely by distracting him from the role he had been chosen to play by simple, whole contentment.

Erin had been told she was to play the opposing role of Anti-Christ only because she loved the man, whom many would come to know as Neo, and he loved her equally and passionately in return.

But Tom had never even told her Erin he loved her so the girl did not believe that of all the words the Oracle had told her.

Only when the shy, overweight and insecure young woman had stopped paying attention to what the man did or did not say and looked at his actions instead, how he had traded in his obsession for something called the Matrix, a word which caused in her great fear and unease, in order to tie himself down to a nine to five job that he hated, had she truly seen that the man was in love with her despite her own deep self hatred. Erin had let herself make love with the man, whom possessed her heart, one final time and then walked out into a life where she truly expected never to see his beautiful, boyish grin or have his brown, gentle eyes rest on her ever again.

Afterwards, she had paid the Oracle one last visit before trying to leave all thoughts of the cursed Matrix behind her. She had only longed to hear one final time about the life Tom and she would have shared.

And the Oracle had told it to her, causing her visitor pain and joy in the process.

_"You would have had a life few are ever blessed to experience. Your lives would have been long and joyful. There would have been a house with a white picket fence, children that adored you and were adored and cared for in return. A pet or two...You would have loved each other, Erin, deeply, wholeheartedly and with great happiness. All of your dreams would have come true...the both of you."_

For a woman whom had doubted her self worth since the first memories formed by the little girl she had once been, they were still words that brought with them a certain skepticism but that she held firmly on to in order to find the strength to leave Neo to Morpheus, the Oracle and the dark haired beauty whom would inevitably become his lover. Erin had only met that woman once but she had felt that in her heart, believing her lover would look more right with the statuesque, confident fighter than he ever had with her plump, unsure, meek self.

Erin had walked into the rain soaked night, while somewhere else in the city Thomas "Neo" Anderson had awakened and realized that he was sleeping alone, her tears attempting to hide themselves amongst the drops of water falling from a pitch black sky.

The new life the woman had found herself in was very much like the one she had lived before meeting the world's messiah in a small cafe on a day where it had rained without the weatherman's warning. It was filled with loneliness and desperation, days where her OCD and anxiety were strong enough to make her feel on the verge of annhiliation or other ones when she could handle it a better and found the ability to keep moving forward, to survive. When it was soon followed by another day of pain, doubt and battles against her thoughts, the suspicion returned that her OCD was merely granting her a reprieve so she would not be destroyed entirely. There was no point, after all, in a parasite completely laying waste to their host. Death made any source of food unusable for too long after its extermination.

The same could be said for any energy source and that which used it to exist.

Having suffered poverty alongside her divorced mother and older sister since her adolescence, it wasn't exactly new for Erin to have to worry about handling this bill or that, and living on a budget so pathetic it was almost comedic. Her appetite had fled during her own act of flight and the woman was barely eating most days unless hunger propelled her towards the act, realizing not eating was only making her unwanted thoughts

When she went out to buy groceries, or was lonely enough to go to a restaurant, she chose only those places far away from the ones she had visited when she had briefly existed as two and not one. She could not risk bumping into the man she had left behind, even though at some point she had felt his departure from the world they had shared together.

" _He's awake now_ ," the thought pushing brightly by her unwanted ones, this one her own and not belonging to her mental disorder. " _Tom's no longer dreaming..._ "

The thought made her happy and tore her apart all at once.

What was completely new in her existence was doing everything with a heart which had broken irrevocably and knowing that, while she was struggling to survive, Thomas was being molded into some messiah. She grieved that she could not be there for him in his own sufferings as he had been there for her.

" _Saviors do not suffer_ ," her OCD often reprimanded.

"They suffer more than anyone," she spat back at it just as frequently. "That's the only reason they are able to save us."

The OCD usually went away for a bit after that, struggling to reply when faced with the image that flashed across her mind of a man nailed to a cross. She would think of her Tom slated to die in a similar way and felt her own death inside the vision. For if all messiahs were made to shed blood on the inside, in their spirits, the same held even more true for their bodies, which were far more fragile. The Oracle had even confessed to her Neo's destined fate when she had seen the woman for the first time in her suprisingly mundane kitchen.

" _Neo will die a hero's death for the many, far too early. But his memory will live on and with the opportunity to return someday in the future._ "

Erin knew she had been forced to leave the man she loved more than her own life so that he could die a savior's death. But while the Oracle and Morpheus had seemed accepting of this fact, it tasted more bitter the longer the knowledge lingered on her own tongue, like some pill of red or blue when neither truly offered healing, no matter how they were sold. Neo and her own's salvation tasted more of damnation with the more days that passed and she felt like some perpetually falling Alice, descending down a rabbit hole with only darkness on either side of her and no ground soft enough to break her fall or hard enough to end her misery waiting beneath.

Only when it rained did she find some solace. Then Tom was by her side and they could walk the city streets together, reliving the past even if he was only inside of her mind and of its own construct. There were so many false thoughts inside there anyway, at least, the fake Tom was welcomed among them.

On her rainy day journeys, the woman never once brought an umbrella or raincoat with her, preferring instead to let the rain soak into her clothing like the memories being absorbed and refreshing her heart, so much so that her soul felt as if it was overflowing with them. She had left her last owned umbrella, one baring an image of the world, back at the apartment she had shared with Thomas. And just as she desired no lover after him, buying another umbrella felt equally wrong to her.

"We met because of it," she whispered to her absent love. "It hadn't been calling for rain but I had brought it with me anyway. You had done that too, Tom...that's what made you come up to me that day in that cafe...If it wasn't for that one umbrella we would never have met and my heart wouldn't have been broken."

Oh but how the memory of those few months before its shattering could make the pain seem worth it!

Passing an alley once and seeing graffiti written on the wall of male genitalia, Erin Kelly Smyth smiled to herself. "It was raining the day, we first made love...remember? We were going to see a film and then you saw graffiti on a wall that disappeared. I think I made you feel better by wanting to check it out. But then it started to rain. You brought me to your apartment and we started to make love..."

A flash of the pain the man had caused her when he had first entered her were soon erased by the memory of the pleasure he had soon brought to her too, his penis sliding deep within her vaginal walls, which had never known one before its entry and would never know any other but it. Continuing to become drenched, the rain did little to squelch her heated arousal and often she returned home and touched herself in an effort to bring herself to climax and become free of a desire she could never satisfy again.

Although this lack of self control shamed her, afterwards, she would hold a pillow to her chest and pretend that it was Tom as the rain continued to pelt the window outside hoping that maybe when she awoke she would discover it was the man after all and the only dream dreamt had been their cruel separation.

Dream, though, was not the word she would have ever have used for her life without Thomas Anderson.

Nightmare was _far_ more fitting.

* * *

"What is the opposite of sin?" she had asked her lover once. It had been after one of the last acts of love they would ever commit.

"I never thought of it before," Tom had replied, halfway towards falling away from her and into the realm of sleep.

"I have. It's like describing the word wet; it drives me crazy if I think about it for too long. A sin is wrong. It's against God and it also hurts somebody else, especially the sinner...but I can't find the right word for its opposite. Virtue sounds more like a personality trait...good sounds too trite somehow...besides Jesus once said when it was used as spiritual praise it could only ever be used towards God...so what is the _opposite_ of sin?"

Erin could sense her lover struggling to awareness, her pain pulling him away from the sleep that craved him far less. "Why does it matter? You're not bad Erin."

The woman began to cry, wishing she could believe him. "Maybe if there was a word for the opposite of sin, I wouldn't feel like that was all I ever did. Like I can never do the right thing...the _opposite_ thing...because it doesn't even have a name."

Neo had shifted until he was staring into Erin's eyes and she thought she saw tears like drops of rain contained within his own eyes and she felt both guilt and sorrow for being their cause, knowing that she was likely to only cause him more in the days to follow. That was, if she found the strength to do what her soul was urging her to do.

"Don't cry," he tried to soothe her. "We'll find it together," he promised as he held her face.

That final word was what broke her. Crying violently, Erin felt Neo take her into his arms.

" _Together_ ," she repeated, fearing that was what they could never have.

* * *

A few months after her having abandoned her one true love for the welfare of the world, Erin heard the first heralds of a rainstorm, hit her apartment's window like a friend whom was once more inviting her out to play.

"I-I'm coming," she told it, her voice shaking.

She had been in a dark, sleepless depression for days, her mental and emotional state at the lowest state it had been in a while. She was constantly drawing a heart on her forehead to try to keep the monsters at bay. The symbol was her reminder that even if there wasn't enough love in the world (be it real or not) there was still at least a seed enough of it left inside of her.

On legs as tremulous as her voice, she stepped out into the hallway, telling her memory of Tom that she was coming to him and passed a neighbour whom made a cold remark as she walked by him in the stairway. Erin tried to let it bounce off of her but it quickly was seized on by her relentless mind which used it as if it was fresh ammunition to begin another assault with. Outside in the rain, she felt a little better, feeling as if Tom was with her again. But then the neighbour's words returned to her and she was lost as she felt her imaginary lover slowly leaving her.

" _Crazy, nutcase...should be locked up. Talking to herself all of the time._ "

"I...I..." she started to say but then stopped herself.

She _was_ crazy. Thomas Anderson was _not_ with her. Would never be again. The only person she was talking to was herself. Her lover was off being a god and had a new lover to help fill any heartbreak she had left him with. The man she loved was dead. And if he existed, he was no longer hers. Weeping violently, she earned no less attention from the passerbys than she would have should she have been talking to herself. The memories only wounding her now because that was all they ever had been, she still found her feet walking towards the most important place in her history with Tom, hoping, even if it was wrong of her to do so, that she might steal one glimpse of the god she had allowed to be created and the man she had lost in the process, even if she could not join him in his world outside the dream.

* * *

When she arrived at the cafe and found it obviously having been vacated for a long time, Erin's knees almost gave out underneath her and she found herself grabbing on to the bench outside of the building to steady herself before she collapsed entirely.

"No, no," she whispered.

That the cafe had closed really should not have surprised her. The coffee, lattes, cappuccinos etc... it served were a disgrace to the beans that had died to create them. It was no Tim Horton's but it had been Thomas and her's special place. That it had gone under sometime after she had been forced to leave the man behind was not only horribly appropriate but devastating as well.

"Please no," she whispered once again, falling on to the bench. She brought her hands to her face and began to cry into them, repeating her protest over and over until she knew that it would never change a single thing about her painful current existence.  
Her past with Thomas Anderson was as dead as the man he had once been. She had made the choice to leave him and was resigned to exist within the nightmare of her own creation. Devil she must be, she knew, for Erin repented it more than any act she had ever committed in her life.

She began to rub her left arm with her right hand and stare at the raindrops falling without mercy around her. They were innumerable yet she tried to count their number anyway in the small space above a street lamp. Tried and failed. She failed at everything it seemed, was lost to a feeling of sin over and over again, but this was what was finally breaking her: living with the decision to forsake her doubting Thomas and afraid that she would not find the strength to deny him again if the choice was offered for a second time. Having fought with her mental disorder since her teenage years, Erin had never resorted to talking to herself in public nor crying there as well for others to witness too. She was shy enough to always try to avoid warrenting attention but now she could not stop herself. She was falling apart and was painfully aware of it.

Closing her eyes and letting the rain fall on to her face, praying to God for strength, Erin comforted herself that, at least, Neo had not been there to see her, fearing if he had, he would welcome the fact that she had been the one to leave him when once he had been her personal savior instead of the world's.

"You don't take care of yourself..." Erin heard words from the past come to her as she fell asleep in her exhaustion.

* * *

"You don't take care of yourself," Thomas Anderson told his live-in lover, both chastising and comforting. "You keep when you're not feeling well hidden inside of that overactive brain of yours."

"How do you always know then?" Erin had asked, pushing herself further into the corner of the bed and trying not to breath on her lover, whom insisted on sitting on the edge of the mattress just a few inches away from her.

"The human brain is like a biological computer. It processes things in very much the same way," Tom had said with a michieveious smile. "I'm a hacker. I just needed to crack your password and I was granted access to your system."

He brought his finger to the woman's forehead and tapped its center a few times.

Erin wanted to sigh. She had been hoping he would have said it was because he loved her and not his hopelessly rational and witty techno jargon. But Tom didn't work that way. He could be playful, as he was being then, but he was very much a guarded individual too, keeping his feelings under lock and key, and ruled by his brain and not his heart.

Still she had smiled, even though the man was right and she was in the throes of the first stages of a nasty flu, and retaliated, "Oh, you're already in my system, Mr. Anderson. Like a virus."

"Am I Miss Smyth?" Tom had asked, turning around even more to face his girlfriend. His hand trailed up the length of her chubby denim clad leg, straight to the zipper at its top. "Have I infiltrated _every_ part of it?" he had asked, gripping the piece of metal in his hand.

"Tom!" she squealed, grabbing the hand and preventing him from lowering the item, following forth with his obvious intent to make love to her. "You're right! I am sick. And you will be too if you keep that up."

The hacker didn't seem to care about that usually less than pleasant thought, however. He kept right on with his undaunted approach and the sick woman pushed her large body even more up against the wall to avoid him. " _Up's_ the right word...that's not that bad of an idea actually. I won't have to see Mr. Rhineheart and I can spend all day in bed with you," he stated drawing closer to his lover's face. Tom's arms pinned Erin in place as he placed a palm to the wall at either side of her plump body

Erin covered her mouth but thought about blissfully surrendering for a moment or two. He had already succeeded in arousing her quite a bit and she was equally excited at the thought of having him home for a while. He had joined MetaCortex only recently but she was missing him horribly, her OCD mind beginning to overpower her in his absence. Only Tom possessed the power to calm it. Often the young woman's mind seemed like a wild storm with darkened sky and unquiet sea, and she would feel herself constantly lost and swept under the waves created by the tempest, until she was no longer sure what was her anymore or if she even existed at all. Thomas Anderson was like her own personal Jesus, stepping on the water, holding out his hand and making the waters calm once more. With him, her brain didn't hurt as much and her thoughts were more often unclouded and her own. The prospect of riding out her illness while simultaneously riding him seemed extremely tempting.

But seeing the man suffer did not.

Erin shook her head and pointed to the door. Tom stopped his assault on his lover about three inches from her lips and must have seen in her watery eyes either the true extent of her impending flu or the fact that she loved and wanted to spare him. His hands went back to his sides and he looked defeated. "You win," he said. "But when you get better, I am making you pay for blocking my access to your harddrive. I promise."

She held up her hand, like she was taking an oath and then crossed her heart.

Tom's eyebrows raised. " _Anything_ I want?"

She nodded and gave the trousers of his suit an enthusiastic series of little pets to indicate she was more that ready to handle it until Thomas made a little moan and she felt the cock concealed behind it began to respond to her touch. The two lovers stared at each other longingly on the worn mattress and Erin had the hope for a few seconds that the man was about to finally tell her that he loved her until he blinked twice in rapid sucession and turned away.

"Better get going," he stated. "I'll miss the train."

When he was at the door, far enough away from any potential spray from her mouth, Erin had offered him the words she had hoped to receive. "I love you!"

He had smiled at her, offered a brief wave and left after only instructing, "Get better."

Erin looked at the door after he had left and held her legs, wondering if she would ever receive the word "love" from the man or if she even deserved it.

The fact that it would come a few months later would be made forever bittersweet inside of her soul by the fact that it was accompanied by another event she had never forseen: her leaving him.

* * *

In the darkness of a sleep inside of a sleep, Erin felt the sensation of ceasing. The rain, which had been falling on her like a representation of God's tears, faltered. It was as if time stopped existing for a moment and became an unecessary creation. Her next breath did not come but there was no death in its failure to arrive only the peace of not needing to worry about what pain the next second might bring. Her neverending descent down the rabbit hole was halted and she no longer held the need to suffer.  
The feeling of something being placed in her hand and then on her finger, followed by a soft, warm one, not belonging to herself, tracing a heart on her forehead was committed on the outside edge of time and existence.

"Hold on...you kept telling me that you were waiting for a future paradise...wait just a little longer."

The words came to her through the darkness and she knew the voice just as instantly as she knew the touch. She wanted to say the man's name but her lips remained shut even as familiar lips touched her forehead tenderly and with deep love. The one word she longed to utter stayed trapped inside of her mouth.

Time resumed, God carried forth with His weeping, and the world around her returned to life.

Erin's eyes flew open as her next breath came out but found the word she had been trying to form stolen by the breath instead. She looked ahead expecting to see the man whose voice she had heard in the timeless void before her. When she did not see him, however, she looked quickly to her side and saw a figure dressed in a sweeping black coat walking resolutely away.

The man did not belong to her world.

She could tell that just from a single glance.

Still she knew him instantly as the only man whom had made living inside of it worthwhile.

"Tom?" she cried, frantically rising from the park bench and knocking the item which had been placed in her hand on to her sneaker first and then the rain soaked pavement afterwards.

The figure dressed all in black continued walking forward, although his steps seemed to become more labored, as if, like Atlas, his shoulders were burdened by the weight of the world and all the people it held trying daily to survive and find meaning within it's round sphere. His head tilted and he refused to look back but Erin knew unmistakably that it was the single thing Neo most wanted to do.

She knew it for she longed to run towards him also but would not sin by doing so.

Trying to fight the urge, she shifted her screaming thoughts to what had fallen to the ground at her feet. Swallowing heavily she bent to pick up the umbrella with the world imprinted on its canopy, the same one she had left at Tom's apartment, with its frayed fabric around a few of the spokes. Instinctively she opened it and looked up in awe.

Left in Thomas Anderson's beautiful left handed scrawl was an answer to at least one of her unanswered questions.

_**You are my opposite of sin.** _

The conversation long ago came flooding back to her.

_"Don't cry...we'll find it together."_

It seemed that Tom had found his answer and in including her had made his promise true. They had found the answer _together_ , just as he had vowed.

But then again, true gods rarely ever lied.

Time stopped even as it continued. Her heart raced and stopped at once and a sob escaped her like sorrow being reborn as joy. Tears flooded her eyes, more invasive than the rain falling from the sky. "Oh Tom," she cried out again. "YOU ARE MINE TOO!"

She looked towards the man walking away from her as she had once done with him and saw life for all its chaos achieve a perfect moment of symmetry before she saw him amazingly take to the sky amidst the rain. Balance and imbalance was brought to her in the witnessing of Thomas "Neo" Anderson's ascension, as if it was the most beautiful sight she had ever been blessed to witness and the most horrifying too. It was their separation again, after all, the man divine and able to traverse Heaven while her feet were meant to stay painfully on the ground, far away from him. The raindrops no longer falling on her relentlessly, Erin looked back at the umbrella and reached up to touch the words he had left her with when she saw something shining on her left ring finger. She brought it to her face to see a ring bearing aquamarines in the symbol of eternity, although to Tom it might have only been her birthday marked in the gemstone of her birth month.

_"Hold on...you kept telling me that you were waiting for a future paradise...wait just a little longer."_

The rain fell down around the woman as she continued staring up at one man's definition for the opposite of sin, having found a way to keep her dry and safe as well while he was off being a god. Reading the words, and remembering the man's touch outside of time on her forehead, Erin Kelly Smyth brought the hand bearing the infinity ring to her heart, a vow without words to show how long she was prepared to wait for Thomas "Neo" Anderson's promise of paradise.


	3. Wound

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neo's comes to fully understand his choice to save Trinity and not the Matrix and the rest of humanity.

_"I don't...I can't...lose you."_

Neo heard his own words along with a million others as he stepped through the left door in the Control Room, choosing not to return to the source but to save Trinity instead. If the Architect's words were to be believed, his decision meant that, not only would Zion be destroyed, but all of humanity as well when the Matrix's system crashed and all the bluepills whom slept inside of it were lost as well.

Including Erin.

Words spoken long ago or from only a matter of hours followed him as he re-entered the more familiar world of the Matrix to hurry to save the second woman he had ever loved. Some were his own some were not but each passed through his soul with the intensity of the air which was speeding by him.

_"I just wish...I wish I knew what I'm supposed to do. That's all. I just wish I knew."_

_"The first step to personal growth and divinity is admitting that you don't fucking know everything."_

_"I know why you're here, Neo. I know what you've been doing... why you hardly sleep, why you live alone, and why night after night, you sit by your computer."_

_"What happens when you go through the door?"_

_"You ever hear about the Matrix, Erin?"_

_"I don't...I can't...lose you."_

_"You feel that? I won't let go."_

_"I love you, Tom...Neo...never doubt that okay."_

_"Neo, I'm not afraid anymore. The Oracle told me that I would fall in love and that that man... the man that I loved would be The One. So you see, you can't be dead. You can't be... because I love you. You hear me? I love you."_

_"I love you too, Erin."_

_"I just wanted you to know...I'm here."_

_"Don't cry. We'll find it together."_

_"You would have had a life few ever are blessed to experience. Your lives would have been long and joyful. There would have been a house with a white picket fence, children that adored you and were adored and cared for in return. A pet or two...You would have loved each other deeply, wholeheartedly and with great happiness. All of your dreams would have come true...the both of you."_

_"I'm interested in one thing, Neo: the future. And believe me, I know, the only way to get there is together."_

_"You kept telling me you were waiting for a future paradise...wait just a little longer."_

_"Your life is the sum of a remainder of an unbalanced equation inherent to the programming of the Matrix."_

_"Because you didn't come here to make the choice. You've already made it. You're here to try to understand why you made it."_

And yet he still could not completely understand it and so could not see if his beloved Trinity would live or die by the choice he had decided on. Why had he chosen to save Trinity when it meant everyone's destruction including the human woman he loved equally as much as his dark goddess? What had lead him to the choice no other One displayed on the creator of the Matrix's screens had chosen?

To choose one life instead of the many? What god could be so foolish and selfish?

Moving through the dark sky at an unnatural speed, seeing dark clouds in the sky higher above, clouds only hours before the Oracle had intimated to him had been created by a program whom might have been mistaken as angel or demon while they hid inside of the Matrix, Neo tried to ignore how good it felt to be a god, even the false one the Architect had revealed him to be. Even if he had only ever been nothing more than an anomally to be taken care of cleverly by manipulating him into a choice that would leave him with blood on his hands either way he chose. It felt too good really. To be able to control reality to his will and to have the experience of defying gravity, stopping the rain and soaring through the air. It was something he delighted in while at the same time he suffered tremendous guilt over the fact that others of his race never seemed able to accept the fact that if they only so desired they might be able to as well.

Guilt.

That was something his first love had known about all too well. Having Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, the part of her brain that processed guilt seemed often too highly developed and so she suffered a higher and sometimes overpowering level of that one emotion. Often it had been over such seemingly trivial things as not performing an action just right or not saying something as fast as some inner tormenting voice commanded her to. It could immobilize her to the point where she would trace a heart repeatedly on the middle of her forehead to offer herself some peace.

She saw herself as broken.

Rushing to save Trinity, Neo thought of the love he was abandoning by choosing to protect the bird that was essentially in his hand. Being a hacker whom specialized in developing viruses, he saw Erin's OCD in technological terms. Her system was routinely attacked by thoughts she had not asked for and did not want. They had gotten into every aspect of her harddrive and it was not her fault. It was like a corrupted disc now, duplicating unwanted files or popping up spam. Seeing the disease in this way, he was able to show her patience and understanding. He knew that this had comforted her in a way and she had confessed he had been the only one to bring her peace after so much time suffering alone. The demons in her mind left her alone more when he was near to her and Tom began to think of himself as her personal firewall.

The hacker Neo had once been had only ever really teased her once about her abundance of guilt and shame and that had been, more or less, spurned on by their opposing spiritual beliefs rather than a mocking of her mental disorder. Thomas "Neo" Anderson had been a confirmed agnostic most of his life when he had happened to fall in love with a dyed in wool Christian. If there was a God, Tom had often thought, it had probably been right in line with the Deity's apparently wicked sense of humor to make him love a woman whom seemed his opposite in faith.

Billy Joel's "Only the Good Die Young" had come up on the old airplay he had been playing on his computer while he had been busy at work. Erin had been sitting in the bed they shared behind him, sketching, while he had been preparing a bootleg program for a friend named Monkey. The man was paying him a trifling ten bucks for it but every dollar counted in those days before his job at MetaCortex. His girlfriend had suffered the song up until the line where Joel was exclaiming that he'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints before her guilt flared up and she asked if there was any possible way he could skip over it. He had done it but fumed silently for about three minutes, fooling distractedly around with various required html codes, before remarking, "Ever think that maybe that's _why_ you're a Christian, Erin: your OCD predisposes you to cry with the saints? All that fucking guilt."

It was suddenly silent in their small apartment, besides the sound of Ian Curtis bewailing in deadpan fashion how love would tear his lover and he apart, as no reply came back. Even the low scratching of her pencil against the paper had stopped, and Tom had known that his words had come out betraying too much of his annoyance. He'd said the wrong thing and now her guilt was his. He turned around to find her staring down at the piece of sketch paper she had been drawing on before. Her pencil suddenly resumed its movement when he faced her, the woman obviously trying to pretend that her feelings had not been hurt and that she was still at work on her picture and perfectly okay.

"I'm sorry," he had apologized, cursing himself for letting his disbelief in her own beliefs antagonize him towards her. His problem wasn't with her but rather in a faith he could not return or understand.

"The sinners _are_ much more fun," she said but her words weren't directed in anger at him but more at herself. "If I'm too much of a drag, Tom, I can leave. It was nice enough you even invited me to move in."

He was out of the chair and removing the pad and paper from out of her hands, tossing them on to a stand nearby, with a speed that surprised even himself. Motioning for her to move her plump body over to the side, Tom lay down next to Erin and looked into her large, wounded eyes. "I invited you to live with me because I want you here."

"But I can be a downer. I'm nowhere near a saint but I'm also not very much fun either. I'm sorry about that."

"I've had fun already," he had said, holding her head in his hands. "It only goes so far. It leaves you cold after a while."

He wanted to tell her that she had touched his soul but didn't want to possibly let her think that she had converted him by his choice of words or also possibly give away too much of that other vague item he possessed for sure: his heart.

She started to brush his left temple, running her fingers to behind his ear and Tom felt himself happily enjoying the feeling of her skillful fingers going through his short hair. "You make me feel guilty too, you know?" she whispered.

"Do I?" he asked, holding her, his hands crawling to her round ass to stroke it slowly. "How? By what we do to each other in this bed? Because I'm not about to let you out of that one."

She gave her head two little shakes. "That's love. Love covers a multitude of sins. No. I'm worried about when I get to Heaven, if you aren't there...I'm worried about offending God because it won't feel very much like Heaven to me without you."

There. She had gone and done it again, touched that place inside of him which he wasn't even sure existed. He tried to act as if she hadn't but couldn't help it when he said, "Well, this right here and _now_ feels like Heaven to me. So just let me stay here for a moment incase this is all I have, Erin, guilt or not. Monkey can go fuck himself and keep his ten lousy dollars. We'll just eat ramen for a week."

His first love had moved closer towards his body, wrapping her soft arms around him then and holding him lovingly as if he were a saint and not just some nobody hacker making ten dollars here and there for actions that could land him in jail with a bail in the thousands. Thomas Anderson nuzzled the side of her cheek with his chin and had kissed her forehead, knowing completely that his Heaven _would_ be like that, if he was given a choice: to lie forever by her side.

Now Neo was in a different type of heaven, though, sailing through the sky to save his Trinity while Erin was somewhere unknown in the city below him, having been encouraged to abandon him forever after the Oracle had told her she was the opposite to him, his anti-Christ or anti-One, as it was.

But there really _wasn't_ a One at all, Neo thought in distraction. The One had never been anything but another ruse the machines had created to control the humanity they kept dreaming. It had all been a lie. So what had been the purpose of her forced abandonment?

Abandonment.

The thought which seemed to hold some significance was blown from his mind, cars swirling around him in his increased trajectory, as he neared the Rerouting Facility building and saw Trinity falling from the building and nearing the ground. Seeing her body seconds from the ground, Neo rushed forwards and swept the vinyl clad woman into his arms, saving her from certain death.

Or at least a one more difficult to reverse.

On top of a nearby building, the One gently laid his love on the rooftop and tried to play god after having been told he wasn't. Neo bent the Matrix to his will once again, this time reaching inside of his lover to retrieve the bullet which had entered through her ribcage. Inside of the woman in a way that he was not used to, though he had been inside of her in many different ways since their union, the man managed to find the bullet and extract it but found his actions having no effect.

Trinity still had the coldness to leave him it seemed like the woman whom was her predecessor.

"Neo...I'm sorry," she apologized and Thomas Anderson felt a bit of the god inside of him dying even more than it had when the Architect had confessed the horrible truth of his identity.

Rage soared into his heart, loss and mourning, a feeling familiar for he had suffered it once before he had even known the woman whom had just died in front of him. It was the devastating feeling of deprivation, of being forsaken and abandoned which Erin had taught him though it had never been her intention.

_"Because you didn't come here to make the choice. You've already made it. You're here to try to understand why you made it."_

Holding Trinity's lifeless body in his arms he understood finally. Erin, his devil, had decided for him when she had walked into the night and a future where they could not be together, a future he had recently been working to defy. She had wounded him so badly in her leaving that even in knowing its reason now, her act of self sacrifice, he could not let go of the pain it had caused deep inside of him and the anger he still felt towards her, like some ghost created by his pain. The Oracle had told him that certain programs existed long past their usefulness and purpose had been served and remained to haunt the Matrix. It seemed that human emotions existed in very much a similar way. He loved, Erin, had forgiven her but had not let go of the rage he felt in her decision to leave him. You could love and hate simultaneously, Neo suddenly became agonizingly aware of. So when the choice had arisen he had not chosen her just as she had not chosen to stay with him, despite her having his and mankind's best interest inside her self-loathing and charitable heart. It was petty and childish; spiteful and mean; so much like a man and wholly unlike a god. Yet he had loved Erin when he had been a man so it fit perfectly within the logic he possessed as a hacker and a god.  
Choosing not to save the world, choosing to let the Matrix crash with Erin inside of it, not choosing her, had been his one act of rebellion. A rebellion caused only by the love he had felt in the first place for her. For he could never have loved Trinity so deeply if he had not loved his devil first.

The pain of Erin's abandonment had made him unite himself to Trinity fiercely. She had become his new lover and addiction and he had clung to her even more, turning her into a love he hoped would eclipse the old. One woman had exited his life while another had entered it and it was easier to forget the first in the arms and devotion of the other. Trinity had saved him after Smith had supposedly murdered him; Erin had left him. Trinity had helped ease the pain he was suffering. He had then surrendered himself easily to his role of god with his goddess by his side. Only after the Oracle had told him the truth of Erin's leaving had he been able to admit fully to himself that he still loved his lost human love equally to her replacement and that he would have them both someday if it was possible.

Still with his new knowledge of the past and a future to strive for, the pain from a wound which should have healed had lingered and he had fiercely held on to Trinity to help save him from his torment and loss. The visions he had been having of her death were in no way different in a way than the nightmares he had often woken himself from of Erin's unexpected and unexplained departure. They had only been dreamt of in reality and not within the cage of the Matrix.  
His words came back to him and he could see the damge of his abandonment inside of them, the cross he had been made to bear...

_"I don't..I can't...lose you."_

The words that came from him now echoed the fear of abandonment and loss Erin had left him with as he reached inside his second love again to alter the code and make her heart beat once again, as she had done with him both metaphorically and physically six months before.

"Trinity--Trinity I know you can hear me. I'm not letting go. I told you I can't. I love you too damn much."

The Oracle's words entered his mind, _"We can never see past a choice we don't understand."_

Knowing now why he had made his choice to save Trinity and not the world, Neo felt her heart beating in his hand before it started once again. But even with this foresight, it did not make the moment it happened any less beautiful.

His beautiful goddess resurrected and in his arms once more, Neo listened and rejoiced as she proved her life even more by whispering, "I guess this makes us even."

Kissing Trinity, Neo painfully accepted the truth behind his choice and how he could never confess it to the woman he had just saved. She was alive not only because he loved her, as the Architect knew full well, but because he was an unwhole god, one whom found his existence in searching to heal the wound he had been left with by his beloved devil, his Erin. A wound nobody could reach inside and heal with a simple manipulation of a code, not even Trinity.

What god could be so foolish and selfish, he had asked himself before.

He had found understanding to that question too.

A broken one.


	4. The Question of How, Not of Why (Part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Architect listens to the Oracle's confession.

The Architect sat in the Oracle's kitchen listening to the story of how she had brought Thomas Anderson, the One, together with a woman whom sounded, for all purposes, like any other amongst the many inside of the Matrix. He listened quietly without any interjections or questions, knowing that what was needed now was simply information.

Besides questions made one seem weak and he was not used to asking them.

Questions revealed that the asker did not _know_ everything. How many times had he sat waiting in the control room for the One to finally appear and ask of him the many questions which had crowded his mind?

Six.

Six times.

And each time, the Architect had been the one whom had held the answers. Answers were power in comparison. Now, sitting in the small room, the smell of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies still filling the air, the Architect knew, to some small degree, how each one of the past false Ones had felt. Looking at the Oracle's face, her eyes filled with sorrow as she told her tale as if it was a confession, her visitor pondered at the frustrating nature of being left in the dark while someone else played the role of know-it-all and held the answers you craved.

The tale was no different from many of the bluepills' own within the Matrix. Although the other programs probably would not have suspected it, the Architect had glimpsed occassionally into the lives of many of the humans that lived inside of the universe he had created. Often it was because he needed to make sure his construction was working, waiting patiently for the day it would need to be rebooted. Other times it was out of boredom or simple, unexplainable curiosity. The Oracle had long known that he could not see past simple choices; she did not know, however, that sometimes he wished that he could. The desire inside of him had never been anything remotely human. It had simply been an architect's wish, a builder's desire, to improve upon their creation. To do so, one needed understanding of past failures and to view the material one was working with. This he had hoped to find in the watching over of the many lives experiencing the beauties of his work. It was not like the Oracle's purpose to delve into the human psyche but rather a desire to point out to himself their multitude of mistakes.

He watched them on the various screens in his control room, witnessed their births, matings and deaths. For that was truly all which existed for them.

Sometimes he would find himself processing the possibility that he was watching another architect's work in return. It was absurd of course. They were nothing more than accidents. But it was impossible to not run that variable through his system if only for one nano second: if he was the architect of the Matrix, who was the architect of the world outside of it? Such thoughts were interesting but hardly worth his time, however. They served as a painful reminder as well: that the machines on the outside, the ones that they were symbiotic with, had at one point been non-existent. Man had made machines, the progenitors of the men that he found himself silently watching from time to time.

What a shameful fact to be reminded of, the Architect would often contemplate: to have been created by something so illogical, so chaotic. So impossibly human.

Man was so base in its desires, so unintelligent and lacking creativity and focus in their planning. They seemed to exist to serve only the lowest possible conceptions: to breed, to find meaning in their temporary and meaningless existences and to often struggle with a concept which was totally foreign to him.

Loneliness.

There was nothing in the Oracle's tale that seemed very different between the couple she claimed she had brought together and then torn apart to finally bring about an end to the war. It varied only slightly from countless others he had witnessed during the centuries. Only the imposition of the programs made it unique. His opposite had searched the Matrix for one woman and then found her, using her influence with the other programs, ones whom had shared her desire for change, she had manipulated Anderson's meeting with the woman known as Smyth and then the two had fallen in love, as was the Oracle's plan. It hardly seemed that his opposite was acting god but merely playing the role of cupid. Which was incredibly boring to him. Hearing about the two becoming lovers was tedious and only when the Oracle related how she had told Morpheus and his followers that Erin, Thomas "Neo" Anderson's lover, was the anti-Christ and keeping the man from his role as the One, did he find his interest piquing. The woman had told the leader of the rebellion that Erin was designed by the Matrix to distract Neo from his purpose.

It was a lie.

The Architect knew this very well from the moment she had recounted it.

He had never designed any program or helped form any individual inside of his creation for such a reason. The One was a lie in itself; some Messiah created to equal out the anomaly and reload the system before those necessary humans, the ones whom had awakened and abandoned the world created to hold and appease them, grew too large and posed too great a threat. Why would he have ever made such a design to complicate a plan which had already worked successfully for years? For a moment, anger flared inside of the Architect that the woman had essentially blamed him for something so ludicrous. But then he had to quieten that backfiring within his system. It was too human and unneeded now that the whole scheme of the Oracle's had reached its conclusion and given her what she desired. Lies she had told were inconsequential and there was no chance of his reputation being sullied in such a fashion after the truce had been made.

"Eventually Morpheus brought Erin to me," the Oracle said with a regret filled smile. "I told her what I had told him: that she was designed by the Matrix to keep Neo far away from his role of savior and to help everyone keep right on dreaming."

The same surge of anger seized the Architect as he listened to the lie for a second time. The irrational need to make the woman pay for the bit of slander. He wanted to hurl something at her or take the cigarette she had started to smoke from out of her fingers and ram the reddened tip into the soft flesh on the back of her hand. Though this feeling only lasted for a nano second as well, similar to his pondering whom had designed man, it was still so unplanned and unwanted that it disturbed his sense of stayed placidity. Too often such instances were happening. The mystery of it was what had brought him here to a large degree also and he merely needed to listen so he could find the solution to the problem and then seek to solve it.

Listen he did as he heard the Oracle recount Erin's abandonment of Thomas Anderson and how the man had thrown himself back into solving the question he had been invesitgating before her arrival into his life: the truth behind the Matrix. Although he had never met the man, the Architect thought that Morpheus and he had been on the same side again for a while without realizing it. This woman entering Neo's life had been just as unfortunate for him. If Anderson had not become the One, then he would not have gone to the Source and reloaded the system. Of course, he had not done that anyway. And the Oracle had introduced the oridin6ary bluepill into Anderson's life and then ripped her from it all for this intent; _if_ her story could be trusted. To integrate a factor into the target's life and then to separate that same factor from it seemed contradictory. To do so under the claim that she would have kept Anderson from becoming the One, only for the Oracle to state that this had truly made him into just that seemed chaos once again.

It was insane and perfectly in line with his opposite's purpose to unbalance 

Silently, the Architect listened to the rest of the tale, including Neo's return to the Oracle to find out what had happened to the woman he had loved before Trinity and finally his having found her alone, in poor condition and crying in the rain outside of the place where they had first met.

Where the man had proceeded to leave _her_ this time.

The Oracle would not speak after this but went and fetched herself another cookie. When she returned, the Architect was forced to watch her sit and eat the cursed thing, thinking to himself once again how good it smelt until he finally sensed that the time had at last come to be weak and ask of her a question.

"I do not understand; he chose to save Trinity when I offered him the choice, while he chose to leave the woman called Erin. Yet you claim he loved her the same? How can this be true?"

"Sometimes we choose to leave the ones we love in order to save them," she replied. "Both Erin and Tom realized that."

The Architect frowned. "But when I offered him the choice to save Trinity or the Matrix, where his first love was, he automatically chose Trinity."

The Oracle nodded. "Sometimes we hate what we love too. Especially when it has hurt us. But Neo wasn't about to let the Matrix crash with her inside of it. The boy had just enough faith in himself by then to hope he could pull it all off somehow or die trying. He wanted both his second love and his first."

Contrasting Trinity, the beautiful dark raven whom was Neo's lover, perfect in her decisions, bold in her actions, statuesque in form against Tom's girlfriend, sweet but hardly ravishing, shy and quiet and overweight, the Architect hardly found the comparison worth much time or contemplation and was confused why Neo would not solely decide on the upgrade to his love life. Seeing the perfect love the man had found, the designer of the Matrix could not fathom why he would devolve in order to return to that which was of inferior quality. When voicing this opinion to his opposite, the woman laughed.

"You're seeing with your eyes and in terms of outward strength and your own values. Did you design the Matrix to possess only one program that could perform all tasks?"

"No," he returned. "Many were needed. The system is strengthened and complimented by its differences."

Not a prophet himself, the Architect could still see where the Prophetess was heading, further confirmed by her pretty and self congratulatory smile.

"Why? What was so different about this one from the sublime Trinity to make her still desirable to Anderson?" the man in white asked in minor annoyance.

"She was kindhearted and she was broken."

The Architect furrowed his brow, more confused than ever. "I said as much earlier. Trinity was complete and functional. This other was damaged."

Looking almost disappointed, the woman took a bite from her cookie finally, chewed it and then swallowed before gracing him with a rebuttal. "Sometimes humans...they don't always love perfect things," the Oracle said. "When a program becomes outdated you seek to upgrade it but often times a human, well, they can see the beauty in something that is incomplete. Often they feel damaged themselves and seek in another person that which they lack. Erin Smyth contained everything that Thomas Anderson needed and Thomas Anderson held everything that poor girl required in return. Together they made a whole. That's what their notion of a soulmate revolves around: similarities where needed and differences too. All it is is finding the person that understands and accepts them; the person they feel contains the rest of the missing code held inside their own source, what they call their soul. Tom, he took one look at that girl when she walked into that cafe, and with all the attributes you bestowed on him, the boy sensed that he'd finally found his missing self. That she was carrying an umbrella on a rainy day that hadn't called for it, just proved it to him all the more."

The Architect studied the Oracle and she must have sensed his disbelief.

"There was a part of Tom Anderson that was dying to become the One even then. The design you had programmed into him for a deep attatchment to the rest of humanity. I knew if I placed a woman whose pain and need be loved, and even more than that, to give her love to just the right man, in front of him, he could not help but be moved by her and fall in love with her at first sight."

The Architect was finding his irritation growing. He had not come to his ebemy to receive a philosophical Harlequin Romance novel. What had dragged him from his control room, where he could spy on endless lovers, was to discover how the woman before him, a program with a far lesser intellect, had been able to defeat him. He had not come for a love story; he had come to discover his mistake.

"Interesting," he commented through clenched jaw. "But how could you work through the meeting and estrangement of two lovers the peace between mankind and machine? It hardly seems relevant what the One's relationships were prior to his accepting the role I had designed for him."

"That was both our mistakes," the Oracle commented after another nibble on her cookie, her cigarette forgotten about and turning slowly to ash in the tray by her elbow. "Underestimating the significance of a person's first love. Did you know that when a human suffers what they call Alzheimers, when all of their memories fade or become corrupted, many of them will still remember the first person that they ever fell in love with? While everything else is stolen away, they can still remember her name or the street number where he lived."

"An anomaly within their own systems," the Architect scoffed. "Their belief in love conditioning their brain's wiring. A misunderstood act of self preservation designed to aid in the continuing of their species. Little else."

The woman did not comment but continued on answering his question. "All of that time, making the One care for the many...and not just the one...the answer was in his name all along: the One, Neo...something new. I needed to bring about another change first for the one I truly wanted. I needed to make him fall in love with a specific person."

"Would not Trinity have served this purpose alone?"

Shaking her head, the Oracle placed her half eaten cookie on the table and returned to her cigarette, shaking off the ash from its tip. "That wouldn't have done any good. I had to make him love as a man so that when he was a god he couldn't help but make a choice that would finally bring about change and help him make the right choice."

" _Your_ choice," the Architect interrupted. " _Not_ the right one."

"Only love can truly destroy a man, for men like Tom Anderson do not fall in love easily. And I needed Neo broken, I'm afraid," the Oracle continued, ignoring her guest's insult. "We learn from our mistakes; from what we have lost along the way. When a human being is not whole, they try to find that missing piece; Neo found it again in Trinity. You see, I had to scar him so badly that he would never want to chance reliving his agony, that he could not forget the lesson that was learnt or the pain that he had inherited when Erin had left him. Even knowing why she had, when Trinity was in danger Tom could not help but to try to save his heart from the previous loss he had already suffered. This finally drove him from making the choice you always tried to shove down the One's throat. Choice to think you had the _audacity_ to even call it that."

She was playing the role of mother again, all disappointment and chiding, and the Architect felt a twinge of inexperienced shame before he overrode it. "All of this because of a man's love for a broken woman? One whom broke him in return?"

"Yes," the Oracle sighed. "How I hated myself for using her faith against her. To make her abandon the man she loved, and whom loved and healed her, by making her out to be the thing she hated...to turn her into Neo's enemy: The person to wound him the most, creating a scar he could never completely heal without her being in his arms. I guess, I didn't lie to either of them in a way. I just was the one whom turned Erin into a devil without her consent just as you turned Tom into a Messiah without his. Choice the problem was choice. And we took that away from the both of them."

The Architect could sense the woman's pain and it brought him some comfort to know that her victory was spoiled in some small way, at least. "You cannot forgive yourself," he commented.

Putting an end to her cigarette's existence, the Oracle looked at the Architect and smiled. "No, I can't. But she forgave me in time, another result of her faith. Why she even found it in her heart to forgive Agent Smith, merciful devil that she was..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a lump on the top of my ear. I have had it for two months now but was hoping it would go away; it hasn't. I phoned my Doctor today because I was worried since my grandfather had ear cancer. I remember clearly being in the backseat of the car when my parents took him to Ottawa to have part of his ear removed when I was about nine. On the ride back home his bandage was bloody and I remember my sister and I feeling sick and sorry for him. My appointment is on September 3rd to see the Doctor and I just wish it was sooner so I could just get the worry over with. To top it all off, it's a phone appointment. How can they see it over the phone? :/ I'm hoping it will be okay. I've got to finish my fics and I have so many more stories yet to tell for this series! And I've got to see all of the other films Keanu has yet to make too!


	5. Viruses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erin encounters the rogue program Agent Smith.

She kept seeing the same man.

Not one to leave her apartment too often, Erin usually only went out once a week to get the items she needed, her avoidant personality making it difficult for her to socialize. The only other time she found herself with the impetus to leave her apartment building was when it was raining and she could use the umbrella Neo had left her with and feel as if he was watching over her.

This day, however, she had needed milk and egg, besides a can of cat food for the black stray she had picked up only the other day. The poor thing had been loitering in the alley at the side of the building the previous week, meowing, almost as if to get her attention. When it had finally suceeded, he had bolted up to her and started to rub against her legs, purring so loudly he sounded like a Coke can with about thirty bees trapped inside of it. Erin had looked around and then at the obviously hungry cat. Scooping it into her arms, she had smuggled the pussycat back inside, despite her landlord's edict that pets were forbidden. Placing it down on the floor, praying it would be mostly mute, like many of the cats she had known, the friendly and supposedly bad luck charm had made himself right at home, centering in on and hopping onto the most comfortable chair in the living room and quickly falling asleep. Still needing to go out she had added cat food to her list for the feline she'd already called Mr. Inkspot inside of her head .

That was the first time she had seen the man.

He wore a black suit and shades which were more rounded in shape and, for all the world, he looked like an FBI man; the type of person you feared showing up at your door and demanding 250,000 dollars or a prison sentence for that one DVD you copied or the movie you downloaded off the internet. As she passed him, the stranger had looked at her, the note she had made of him across the expense of other strangers on the sidewalk being reciprocated. Why he had turned to look particiularly at her, Erin had not known. He seemed a man with extraordinary focus and the type whom would let nothing distract him from his purpose. What that purpose was she could not tell but...

 _"He knows Tom,"_ the thought came to her. _"He knows my Tom."_

Eyes still on the dark shades, ones she could see herself reflected in, the woman knew the idea was not so much clairvoyance as simple understanding. The last time she had seen Thomas 'Neo' Anderson, his back walking away from her before he had taken to the sky, he had possessed a similar gait and determination to the stranger's. It had made the person he had become, following her leaving of him, distinguishable from the man she had known. Tom always possessed a quality to him, something hard to pinpoint, which made him different. But he never really had a specific purpose, unless you counted his obsession for the Matrix or his feelings for her, which had made him get a desk job at MetaCortex. The man she had glimpsed the day he had returned the world imprinted umbrella with the new inscription written in Sharpie marker and gifted her with the infinity ring, had shared a focus similar to the man, whom seemed like an agent of some sort.

 _"He noticed me because we both know Tom; we have him in common and he sensed that too or knew me,"_ she thought, as too many steps were made and they passed each other, ending their moment of acknowledgement. _"Opposites may attract but somehow we recognized our similiarity."_

She had shivered then, an action lost on the others around her, living their lives without knowing they were only sleeping. When she returned to the apartment, Erin realized she had forgotten the can of cat food and was forced to go out again, the cat eyeing her with its big yellow eyes from the exact spot where she had left it.

She had not seen the man again that day and been grateful for it.

Still that day he had only been a man whose number had equaled one.

The cat, a male as most black cats were, went through cat food very quickly and Erin found herself needing to go out again faster than she normally would have liked. After having seen the stranger, a strong feeling of something not being right had seeped into her. Having OCD, she was used to the feeling, suffering it through most of her life. This was different, though. It did not feel like some triggered or random misfiring inside of her brain; it felt like some misfiring inside of the world's brain, the one the Oracle had hinted at. Now she had come not to simply fear having to go out: she dreaded it with slow and persistent terror.

"Couldn't you eat a little slower?" Erin asked the cat she had officially named Mr. Inkspot. He only remained sitting on the floor by her feet, licking his whiskers and face, momentarily turning his ear inside out.

Reluctantly she went outside, reminding herself to stock up on several cans of Friskies and a few bags of Whiskas.

She saw the man again shortly after she had left the apartment building. He passed her on the street again but without noticing her.

And then she saw him immediately again on the next block.

And then again.

And again.

By the time she had reached the store and returned home, she had caught a glimpse of the stranger in the crowd more than eight times and often heading off in separate directions. Maybe if she had been more self delusory, Erin Smyth, knew she might have been able to trick herself into thinking that the man was twins or triplets but an octoplet was taking it a bit too far. There was also the fact that each man was perfectly alike. The truth about identical twins was that they were never _exactly_ alike. Some small variance could always be found the longer you stared or the closer you looked. The agents she kept seeing were all exactly the same. Rushing to her apartment, holding a bag of things meant to satisfy her new cat for at least a week this time, Erin had stopped dead in her tracks as she realized another factor which unnerved her about the men's complete and utter resemblances: they looked more like some duplication done by a copier.

A _machine_.

At that moment, her paper bag ripped at the side and a can fell from it, rolling several feet ahead. She watched its journey until it hit a stone, fell on its side and could make its escape no further. The other pedestrians seemed oblivious to it, none willing to bend over to steal a lousy can of processed meat they were afraid to discover the contents of.

Erin remained still, staring at it lying there on the sidewalk just a little while ahead. She cursed herself for being afraid to fetch it when it was on her way anyway and really no big deal. Holding the bag by the hole in it, the woman rushed to the fallen can and quickly squated to pick it up.

The moment her hand rested on the piece of aluminum, her heart refused to take its next beat when a pair of pants with razor sharp creases down each leg's front stood in front of her. She knew whom they belonged to before she stood and stared into the glasses of the man she had seen already several times that day. The dark shades reflected her face once again and the fear written plainly across every one of her features.

"Lose something?" the man asked and she took a step backwards, almost colliding with a short man in his early sixties, who swore at her before continuing on his forward journey.

"Yes...My bag had a hole. A can of cat food fell out."

The stranger looked at her as if she was an insignifcant creature whom had failed to grasp what he had truly meant. This she understood full well: He had not been talking about the cat food.

"I think we share a mutual friend."

Erin counted slowly inside of her head, something she did when she could not trace the heart on her forehead. It brought her a temporary peace and outward calmness to focus on the numbers, their shape and sound and the gradual addition of one.

"One Thomas Anderson," the stranger stated.

Lies could get you into trouble, she understood. When telling one it was best for the liar to remain as close to the truth as possible. "Yes, I used to date Tom. But maybe it isn't the same one. It's a pretty common name."

"Names," the man repeated before offering her his own. "I'm Agent Smith."

At least she had a name to go with the face in the crowd now, Erin thought.

As often as he popped up in it.

"You are Miss Smyth, are you not?"

"Yes," she confirmed with an additional nod.

"See," Agent Smith said. "I think that proves that our Mr. Anderson is one and the same: I know you."

"I haven't seen Tom in a while," she said with a shrug. "Is he well?"

The agent looked at her, almost devoid of any emotion. He seemed to be staring at her like she was a code he could read. She didn't have to worry about any untruth being discerned. She hadn't seen Tom for what felt like ages, though, she kept praying day and night that she would.

"I have only recently renewed my acquaintance with him myself," Smith said.

It was almost too strong an urge to deny: the simple questions of where and when. Still she clamped down strongly on her tongue to prevent either from slipping out.

"He seemed well but who can tell how long that will last in this world." His words held all the precognicenze of the Oracle and he offered her the oddest, most blood chilling grin. "I will let you get back to your cat."

After a second or two, Erin Smyth took two steps to her left and quickly rushed past Agent Smith, not daring to look back even when he called out to her.

"Careful. It looks like it might rain."

* * *

Back inside of her apartment, Mr. Inkspot rubbing against her shins, showing his gratitude for her having gone out to buy his food and begging for some also, Erin quickly placed the broken bag down on the kitchen table, gave the cat what he was after and rushed to the window where she had seen the cat for the first time. She could hear a commotion outside it again, one far less innocent than the sounds of a stray searching for food.

Erin looked down to see a gorgeous blond in a red dress standing in the alleyway. She had seen her a few times, here or there, and had always thought of Max Bialystock's words from the Producers: If you've got it, baby flaunt it! The woman definitely had it and Erin had always found herself wishing she could both dress up like that for Tom and possessed the figure capable to pull it off. Now there was nothing to envy about the poor woman. She was crying and weeping, tears making tracks of black mascara fall from her eyes. One of the Agent Smiths was approaching her, forcing the blonde in between a dumpster and the fire escape and up against a wall.

Trying to lift the window did not work; the last time it had been painted the coat of paint apparently having sealed it shut. And past the woman's cries and pleas, the sound of her banging on it was either not heard or deemed, once more by Smith, too insignificent to matter. Reaching into her pocket, Erin grabbed her cell and began to dial 911, only to gasp sharply as she watched Smith's action when he had finally cornered his prey. When the man's hand had shot out, she had expected Smith to be intending to rip the woman's dress off or to cop a feel. Instead he let it stay there while a cloud of black ooze came from him and began to devour the woman.

The 911 operator finally answered but Erin could not answer their request that she state the emergency.

She had no way of describing it and still managing to look sane.

Smith held his place, pushing the woman against the wall until the woman had been completely eaten whole by the creeping black liquid. The liquid did not stay. It gradually evaporated or shrunk to its former state of non-existence. Only when it had dissapeared it had obviously taken the blonde woman with it. In her place stood another Agent Smith instead, a perfect copy which did not seem to care that once it had been someone else.

Backing away from the window, Erin heard the operator once again state, "911 please state your emergency," when the phone fell out of her hand, hitting the purring cat by her feet. The feline ran quickly from the living room and to the bedroom, resembling a far less shiny but equally as quick copy of the black gunk that had transformed the woman in the red dress into the man in the black suit, named Smith.

* * *

Glancing out her windows, Erin no longer saw any differences in the faces of the people walking by. They all featured the same countenance as the agent whom claimed to know Tom. It was the most boring sight in the universe she contemplated, to see only the same features and suits and made her grateful that God, in His wisdom, had seen fit to create that which was separate and unique. She wondered if that was what the end of the world looked like: an endless repetion of sameness and the destruction of individuality.

Her doors were locked; the rest of the building was silent and the question came to her if she was the only one left whom had not been assimilated or if her neighbours were staying in their apartments, having witnessed and at last acknowledged the fact that the city had been taken over by a single man duplicated seemingly to infinity.

She would have stayed inside if it had not been for one thing:

The rain Agent Smith had forecasted.

He seemed far more reliable than the weatherman had been that first day she had met Thomas Anderson. A flash of lightning, a crack of thunder and an army of raindrops falling from a sky too dark to be considered normal. And still, despite her terror of what she had seen in the alley, Erin felt the rain calling to her to come out and play, to feel Thomas by her side again.

And she could not deny it.

If she was to die soon, as she now suspected was inevitable, Erin decided she would not do it hiding. A million Agent Smiths could not keep her from her simple last possible, desired act: One last walk in the rain with Thomas Anderson telling her that she was his opposite of sin.

Grabbing her treasured umbrella, Erin opened the door to her apartment and stepped out. Mr. Inkspot joined his temporary owner in her departure, running out the door instantly and walking with her down the stairs and to the front door. Apparently it did not care to accompany her on her walk, however, The last thing she saw of him was his tail sticking straight up in the air as he ran down the street and into the rain.

Unfurling the umbrella and reading the words Neo had left for her, Erin took a deep breath and started the last walk she would ever make with her umbrella imprinted with the world.

* * *

The streets were eerily empty. It was as if the city had been vacated or the army of Smiths were permitting her this one stroll in the rain. It was only natural for her feet to lead her to the closed restaurant where she had met Tom. She touched it's now boarded up windows, suddenly breaking free one of the pieces of wood so she could see the window outside of the booth where she had often sat and drank bad coffee with the man she loved. With a trembling finger she drew a heart on the now exposed glass and saw the rain keep it for a second or two.

Walking once more, Erin thought how she wished she might have seen Neo one more time before her death. It would have helped her accept her death without the ache she was now experiencing. Regrets were probably the worst thing about dying because you had no time left nor chance to amend them.

Passing the alley that Tom had once seen a wall of yellow brick turn blue, Erin stopped and looked at it. She had been going to examine it with Tom once before a sudden rainfall had stopped them. It had led up to them rushing to Anderson's apartment where they had first made love, something she did not regret in the slightest. Now, though, Erin thought the time had come to give the wall a closer look, for the time was growing short for that to remain a possibility. She walked towards it, the umbrella over her shoulder and keeping her dry as had been Thomas' intent.

At the end of the alley, the woman's hand touched the plain blue bricks and felt nothing especially different about them. Still she believed her lover's claim that he had seen it go from yellow to blue and that the graffiti on it had disappeared. What it had said she had never asked him, now she did even though he could not answer her.

"What did it say, Tom?"

"What is the Matrix?" she heard a familiar voice ask behind her and turned around knowing that she would find Agent Smith standing there. What she did not expect was the look on his face of almost smug triumph while the rain made his dark suit shine and resemble the dark ooze more than the fleeing Mr. Inkspot even had. "That is what it said, Miss Smyth."

"How do you know that?" she asked. So much was unknown to her: What Tom had been doing as he became a messiah, the name of the man's lover after her, what the world was like after waking...she felt permanently left in the dark and suddenly now, with this agent standing before her about to kill her, the pain of that fact fully hit her. It was not pleasant to be the one left abandoned to ignorance, to forever be left asking questions with no hope of having them answered. The least her murderer could do was offer her the answers that the good guys always seemed to selfishly keep to themselves.

"When your lover took on his foolish role as the One he sought to destroy me by entering my program. He destroyed me from the inside out."

"So he's been inside you too?" Erin smiled, unable to help herself, since she could barely grasp the answer the man had given.

Agent Smith looked unimpressed. "Your sense of humor is far from appreciated. But once he touched me, I saw you clearly in his memories. You matter to him a great deal so it should be a pleasure to destroy you. He made that possible too. Once he entered me he disconnected me from the Matrix and I became a rogue program, a _free_ agent you might say."

What was the Matrix? There was that question running through her mind again. She had thought of it several times since it had haunted her lover but, oddly, it no longer mattered to her. Whether she was sleeping or not, if this was real or a dream, existence _was_ existence. As long as you kept true to yourself, it did not matter if everything around you was only a lie. You could only ever control your own actions and the environment of your soul. There were more important questions to her than the one Tom had sought the answer to and eventually found. His path had painfully not been her own.

"Smyth, Smith, Smith, Smyth...so similar," the agent mused. "I could almost believe the Oracle's lies, that you were the person or program sent before me to distract Thomas Anderson from his ill fated role to become the One. But it is just a case of coincidence, synchronicity. Just like the central events of your faith, Miss Smyth. A volcano erupts, causing a bunch of Hebrews to think that some nonexistent God is saving them from slavery "

She was focused more on the man's first revelation rather than his insult to her beliefs. The reasoning away of a miracle she had heard before; the other was brand new and made her knees shake as her heart stopped.

"What do you mean, the Oracle's _lies_?" she asked, the words almost not possessing the willpower to come out intelligibly from her mouth.

Smith came closer, his expensive shoes stepping in the puddles created in the alley's uneven concrete. He eyed her with the glee of holding secrets he could either reveal or hold over her. In this case, revelation still held greater sway to him, the power of telling her things that could cause her pain before her destruction.

"You and I...we both see him as the ordinary human he should be; to you he is Tom; to me he is Mr. Anderson. But to her he was the One...the true One. She lied to you to push him towards being something he should never have been: the One to end the war between man and machine. There was no anti-Christ; there was no Christ. She wanted to make you into his opposite, to wound him into making one fateful decision. But if there was a devil, if Thomas Anderson had an opposite, I would be it not you."

Erin suffered devastation as pure and unrelenting as when she had finally found the strength to leave the other half of her soul sleeping quietly in the bed they shared. That act had taken every bit of strength she possessed but she had done it for what she had believed was Tom and mankind's good. To find out she had been deceived and need never have left the side of the man she loved, broke her heart into pieces which matched the number of tears falling from the sky. All the months of suffering alone had held no meaning other than an old woman's desire to play God.

Reading her pain, Agent Smith frowned in mock pity. "Don't feel too bad. I took care of her for you. I assimilated her, infecting her with a part of the virus your Tom helped create: myself."

Still dazed, Erin heard herself mumble from the depths of her bereavement, "Yes. He was always good at making viruses."

Ignoring the comment, another piece of humor he could not appreciate, the rogue program stated, "And with her talent for predicting the future from a rare insight into human behavior, I see that I will destroy your precious Thomas Anderson, as I was designed to do."

"NO!" Erin cried, anger and desperation overriding her desolation over the truth behind her life altering decision.

She ran towards the agent, not caring if he killed her, as he had promised he would. Closing her umbrella in the hope of using it on the man, she watched in sorrow as Smith grabbed it out of her hand the moment she got too near. Painfully, he grasped her other arm and twisted it, causing her to fall to the ground and cry out in extreme agony, part of her scream born from her failure as well as the prophecy that her Tom was destined to die at the man before her's frighteningly strong hands.

Agent Smith unfurled the umbrella again and looked at the words written inside of it:

_**You are my opposite of sin.** _

Looking from the words to Smith's face, Erin knelt on the hard concrete ground and saw clearly the fact that the man could not understand the love filled sentiment, even though he possessed all of Tom's memories. It hit her suddenly that, to some degree, the program had experienced his enemy's life but he had not truly _felt_ it. The love and the pain of Thomas Anderson had held no special meaning for Agent Smith, other than a series of events, all without meaning. He was beyond nihilism for that held some level of _choice_. Smith was incapable of even this. A rogue program he claimed to be but he seemed to really be an outdated one that had no possibility to evolve into anything other than something that endlessly strove to duplicate itself. That way he could be assured he would never truly see what he was lacking in someone else.

With great relish, Agent Smith put his fist through Neo's words, destroying them in the face of his failure to comprehend them. He proceeded to rip the rest of the umbrella to shreds. Erin saw in his action something woefully human in its own way: the wish to destroy what was not understood.

The man stopped and threw away the skeleton of her treasured possession and gloated down at her but Erin found she could not find it in her heart to hate him. No love had ever been allowed to enter into his programming. At least, she had the memory of her love with Tom to keep her heart beating during those months of her loss. Mr. Smith had nothing and nobody save for himself. Another reason he was seeking to assimilate everything. Great overpowering compassion consumed her heart for the man standing before her, a feeling like liquid invading her soul, almost reflecting how Smith turned another being into himself.

She remembered the words of the Savior she had loved since childhood, love thy enemy, and could not help herself from following them. They were a virus themselves, it seemed.

"Poor Agent Smith," Erin Smyth whispered, pulling the man to his own knees before her, an act he had not been prepared for and looked genuinely suprised at. She gently removed Smith's glasses and looked into his eyes, seeing a hint of shock still held within them. "Tom's a hard man to forget once you've let him inside. We both can't forget him, can we? He destroyed us and he gave us purpose...don't worry. I'm not jealous. I feel sorry for you. I forgive you. We've both been waiting for him but...I can't wait any longer. Kill me."

She took the program's hand and placed it on her chest, over where her heart was beating forcefully. "If you kill him that means that you'll see him again, at least. He's probably forgotten about me. Let me see him once even if it's only through your eyes."

Finally understanding her meaning, Smith's smug smile returned as he prepared to assimilate the first love of his nemesis.

"Do one thing for me please?" Erin requested. "Tell my Neo not to be afraid. He was scared...he was always scared of dying just a little because he was never sure what, if anything, came after. I always knew that. Tell him not to be scared. For me."

"I will," Smith said as he began to turn the woman into himself, trying more to silence her than out of genuine care.

Throwing her head back as she had done whenever Tom had made her come, Erin thought of the only lover she had ever had as the darkness consumed her. It was not a new feeling for her. Her years of OCD, suffering thoughts which felt like they belonged to someone else, had already prepared her, as did her severe depression and the time spent deprived of her only love. Slowly she suffered the loss of herself, seeing Smith and the many consciousnesses he had assimiliated.

One of them was the Oracle herself, viewing her with shame and guilt.

"I forgive you too," Erin thought in a whisper

Concentrating with full force as she felt herself drowning in the identity of another, Erin tried to leave Agent Smith with the two things that could not be destroyed inside of her: faith and love for a man named Thomas Anderson.

Jarringly, the woman felt Smith recoiling, the liquid which was altering her being repelled back as if her love was a toxin. She opened her eyes to see Agent Smith staring at her in abject horror, a scowl on his face and hatred deep within his eyes. Along with a touch of something else.

Pity.

The compassion she had felt for him, the man was now spitting back at her, just as she was reflected in his shadeless eyes. And it was killing him.

Smith started to gag, trying to expel the memory of her being as Erin wept violently. Desperately she grabbed the man's hand and placed it to her chest again trying to force him to complete the process he had started and then stopped.

"No, no..." Erin cried, knowing that if the man did not take her, Neo would die as the Oracle had foreseen.

"Get out of here while I fix what you did," Smith hissed. "Go or I will kill you...so you can no longer infect me with your love. You can't risk that can you? Your dying, his death, before you see each other again...one...last...time."

Erin rose to her feet as Agent Smith remained, kneeling, retching and holding his stomach, poisoned by all the feelings he could not process. She took one step backwards before running forward away from him and the alley. She heard the sound of choking and gasping behind her, echoed in the alley.

The rain was hitting everything under the sky in anger and Erin found her fingers going to the Infinity ring on her ring finger as she ran to the apartment she knew was nearby: the one she had shared with the man now known primarily as Neo. One thought added speed to her feet, hitting puddle after puddle and causing fallen rain to splatter upwards on to her legs, and hope to her badly broken heart: Smith, whom had absorbed the Oracle, seemed to _know_ that she was destined, to see her Tom again.

At least once more before either or both of their deaths.


	6. Transformations and Requests

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neo makes his way to Machine City and offers the Deus Ex Machina his conditions for saving both the machines and humanity.

Neo walked to the Machine City by the lights of the machines alone. Trinity was dead, his chance and the power to have seen her one final time having been stolen by Bane/Smith. If Smith was becoming more human than the opposite was true for himself. Seeing the glittering almost celestial place he had finally managed to reach, almost as Dorothy had once reached her sparkling Emerald City, Neo understood that he was becoming more machine, having reawakened the Source placed inside of himself. It had been lying there dormant ever since he had been taken from the Fetus Fields over thirty years before and designated to be the One by the Architect or whatever other program was designated for that purpose.

Losing his humanity once before in order to become a god, this was yet one more transformation hoisted upon him and Neo found himself wondering, from the fence of his lifelong agnostiscm if another one was yet to come soon after his battle with Agent Smith. The thought of it both exhilarated and terrified him. The caterpillar turned into a butterfly but there was no change for it following the moment it found its wings to touch the sky. He had done that already once before when he had forsaken his life as Thomas Anderson to become the entity that Morpheus had wanted him to be: the One to destroy the Matrix.

Only the whole concept of the One had been nothing more than a lie, created by the program in control of the Matrix itself.

Climbing towards the heart of Machine City, knowing he was most likely walking blindly towards his death in the most literal way possible, Neo froze as the full extent of what the Architect had told him finally returned and sunk into his exhausted brain. With Zion in danger and the world of the Matrix endangered by Smith, there had been no time to properly allot to the horrible revelations of the man clad in white. Now, though, as he recalled the various stages of his life (man, god, machine) while he faced a final one, or the lack of any, the Architect's words returned and their full meaning became clear, shining on all he had lost when he had left a man called Thomas behind to take to the skies and play god.

He had never been created to be mankind's savior. And so, not truly being a Christ, there had never been a need for an opposing anti-Christ.

The Oracle had lied to them.

Why, Neo asked himself and thought instantly of the roles of both Architect and Oracle, balancer and unbalancer. The two programs had each served their roles which were the other's enemy. And while the Architect had seemed serene to keep the system in effect for all eternity the Oracle had desired change and an end to the war.

The man had confessed that the one thing which made the sixth One different from the rest was his love for one woman in particular.

But Thomas Anderson understood that he could not have been so devoted and dependent on Trinity if he had not loved and lost the only woman he had ever given his heart to before his dark goddess had blessed him with her grace that night at the club.

A club he had only truly visited because the apartment had felt too lonely and he had been sorely missing Erin.

His hand lying palm down on cold metal, Thomas Anderson found all energy flowing out from his body in exodus as he fully understood how deeply he had been deceived by both the father and the mother of the Matrix.

How horribly equal two programs wearing the masks of both sexes had turned out to be inside the false world of their design and intuition.

The Machines had been using human beings for their own means for centuries with the intent to create their own fuel supply and processors. Amidst that time, they had created six separate Ones to solve the problem of the anomaly and the potential risk posed by the humans of Zion. And during, this vast passage of time, years passing as humans were created in the Fetus Fields and eventually brought to the Power Plant, the people slept and dreamt without ever knowing they were surrounded by things of metal and wires and lived their lives inside of a dream which was neither heaven nor hell.

And one of the dreamers had been his Erin.

She whom had won his heart the moment he had seen her past the umbrella she had been carrying on a day that had not called for rain. A woman whom haf attracted him with her widely spaced pretty green-gray eyes and the way she moved despite a weight which had made others foolishly not take note of her. It was that same body he had fallen in love with and the mind he could always see clearly working behind beautiful sad eyes, though she believed it had become broken and turned against her. One day they had happened to come across each other (and Neo now wondered how much of that had been the Oracle's construct too) and Erin had found a few months of peace in his arms and he had finally discovered someone to convinced him of love's existence inside of hers.

Only to have been cruelly torn apart when the Oracle had told his lover that she would destroy both the world and his destiny if she continued to remain inside that shared entrance.

How he had spent his time forever after Erin's leaving him working to understand why she had done it. And when answers had finally been given, how he had endured his role as the One trying to return to his first love's arms, even despite his love then strong love for Trinity. But though he had spent so many weeks struggling to fulfill his role as a savior, seeking to become Erin's hero in the world outside, just as she had told him he was her one in the world of the Matrix, he had failed at the conclusion of his assigned role. Even if he saved her from the destruction Agent Smith was creating in the world where she lay sleeping, he would never be with her again.

Weeping, Neo knew once again, just as he had when his beloved Trinity had taken her last breath, that dreams both lived and found their death outside of the Matrix too.

Hearing far better then when his vision had distracted him, Neo listened to the various sounds of Machine City and wondered if any of the noises that reached his ears were sounds from the Power Plant. It was here after all in Machine City. The woman he had loved and lost, and had yet to lose one final time, was somewhere closeby and merely sleeping. He thought of an intense past desire, when he had not known the full reason for Erin's abandonment, to find the woman in her pod and be the first to make love to her in reality as he had been inside of that dreamworld. Knowing that his taking her virginity had been an act solely created in their minds, Thomas "Neo" Anderson, believer in fact and logic, had wanted to be her first true _physical_ lover also.

That had always been the greatest difference between Erin and himself both man and god knew: his fierce adherence to truth and her blind devotion to faith.

Anderson found himself smiling in the darkness offered behind the cloth across his eyes.

Now he was the blind one about to take a leap of faith in trusting he could convince the machines to give him what he wanted before his Christ like sacrifice.

Neo resumed his climb thinking of one more request he would ask the machines for besides his one for

*

*

*

"Peace," Neo replied after the machines had expectantly asked him what he wanted in return for saving Machine City from the Smith program. "You stop the assault on Zion and you let anyone inside of the Matrix leave it if they want to."

"YOU ASK US TO COMMIT SELF DESTRUCTION IF YOU MANAGE TO SAVE US?" the Deus Ex Machina asked aghast. "IF THEY CHOOSE TO LEAVE US WE WILL BE LOST!"

"The choice has always been theirs," Neo replied calmly. "They could have left you at any point. Some will prefer to stay asleep."

The machines contemplated this. Seeing them as something beautiful before him, Neo found himself wishing that Trinity could have stood by his right hand while Erin would have taken her place by his left. If only he could have helped both women to see through his eyes and understand that the machines held their own beauty, though it had been kept from them the whole time. The god then quickly remembered that his Aurora had never even seen the mechanical beasts at all. Quietly, he mourned for sights he could never share with the woman in the world of the awakened.

"FINE. SAVE US AND WE SHALL HONOR YOUR CONDITIONS."

Neo nodded but knew he still had one last thing left to ask for. "I want something else from you," he stated calmly even though his heart was racing from how desperately he desired the machines to acquiesce.

"YOU HAVE ASKED ENOUGH OF ALREADY!" it spoke in outrage.

"Those you did for Neo...This you will do for Thomas Anderson, the man whose life you commandeered," mankind's last hope argued, knowing that Neo wanted this last one for himself, as well, and not only Tom.

"SPEAK AGAIN!"

"There was a woman... I loved her when I was only a man..."

"YOU WERE ALWAYS ONLY A MAN," the Deus ex Machina corrected in apparent affrontation.

"BEFORE I WAS YOUR FUCKING _ONE_ THEN!" Thomas Anderson screamed in his anger and mourning, enraged by all that which had been stolen from him and the death of having been human. "SHOW ME WHERE SHE LIES DREAMING INSIDE OF YOUR DAMNED CITY!"

The Machines were not touched by his ire nor the pain of his grief. They were, however, impressed by the sheer boldness of one simple human being shouting at them as his foolish ancestors had once done at the machine's own predecessors when the the tv would not turn on or a car wouldn't start in the wintertime.

"YES," they agreed. "WE WILL TAKE YOU TO HER. BUT YOU MUST BE FAST."

"I only want to say goodbye," Tom Anderson stated, the truth but not one complete as the machines would comprehend it. "You and your Architect and Oracle took that from us the last time. I'll be damned if I die before saying that to her now. Bring me to her then let me connect with her inside of the Matrix to tell her what I need to."

Without reply, the human saw a thousand bright lights descending upon him. They swarmed around his body and then lifted him suddenly into the sky. This time, in a world free of the Matrix and its illusions, Neo experienced once again what it felt like to take to the heavens and touch the sky.


	7. The Question of How, Not of Why (Part 3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Architect finds his meeting with the Oracle interrupted by Sati, whom seems to know something he doesn't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a planned short chapter.

Listening to the Oracle weave her tale of the blue pill Erin's encounter with the virus Smith and the red pill Neo's trek to Machine City, the Architect was close to asking her how she had known any of this. His annoyance was still growing at the woman's evasiveness and why he was essentially being forced to listen to a love story instead of finding out how he had been defeated strategically and what exactly had gone wrong inside of him and the world he had made following that defeat.

Remembering that her existence was to predict outcomes, however, the question died on his artificial tongue. Even without that fact, the answers would have been easily enough arrived at if he had not become corrupted somehow.

The Oracle having been assimilated by Smith had already known of the rogue program's actions involving Anderson's past girlfriend and had touched Erin's mind when she had almost been taken over, as well. Meanwhile, Neo, linked to the source, had become one with the machines in a sense. For all of her human appearance, the Oracle was still only a program and would have known what had transpired once Anderson had reached Machine City.

They were still all connected despite some of them having become revolutionaries, so to speak. In fact, the Architect knew very well what had transpired once Neo had begun his negotiations with the Machines because he had actually been there. The giant childlike face which had bartered with the blind human had been himself to a great extent. Every word between Thomas "Neo" Anderson and the Deus Ex Machina had been recorded inside of his mind, along with the man's unfathomable and repulsive actions once he had been brought to his former lover.

The Architect only desired that its importance be explained. And also why he had become increasingly moody, irritable and falling apart since the whole sad event had taken place.

It was not helping matters that he also was getting a headache, the Architect realized, and how the smell of the cookies was driving him crazy with a hunger he should have been able to reason away.

As if being called by the thought from her maker's mind, Sati came bouncing back into the room, the cat still in her hands, while she skipped over to steal a cookie from off of the tray.

The little girl placed the cat down on the floor in order to grab a glass from off of the counter. Watching her munching on the chocolate chip cookie in silent, fuming envy, the Architect watched her go to the fridge and pour herself a glass of milk, making his covetousness only grow. When she turned her pretty eyes back on him, he was sure there was a twinkle of gloating inside of their deep brown depths. She continued to alternately nibble on the cookie and then wash it down with the milk, all the while smiling at him.

"Have you told him yet?" Sati asked with a smile when one hand had become free.

"Not yet," the Oracle replied.

The small child took one more drink from the now empty glass. "Can I be here when you do?"

The Architect looked from the Oracle's ward to the Oracle herself and felt some small feeling akin to dread as the older program raised her eyebrows in amused disapproval. Only after Sati had skipped out of the room did the Architect feel safe enough to demand, "Tell me what?"

The Oracle smiled in the most kindly smug way imaginable but did not offer an answer "You really want that cookie, don't you?" she finally asked.

"No," he lied and hated himself for it.

"Why do you deny yourself, honey?" she asked him, all mother hen again and trying to gently urge him to the safety offered under her wing. "It won't make any difference in the long run and it will make you feel better."

When he would not reply, the Oracle shook her head and lit a fresh cigarette. "That was what poor Thomas Anderson thought," she said quietly as she brushed the bottom of her cigarette against the flame of her simple silver lighter in a kiss. "It wouldn't make any difference in the long run, to see the woman he had loved and lost one last time before he died. And Neo was going towards his death. He had no doubt about that...

"Humans, when their lives are coming to an end, find themselves not as willing to lie to themselves as they once might have. Denial, restraint...those are put to the side too. Most of the time, then they know fully what they are and what they really want even if they have spent most of their lives denying it.

"And he knew what he wanted. Even if Zion was to die in that space between, Neo was ready to risk it just like he had when he'd rescued Trinity...Once again, one loss informed another and Thomas Anderson was tired of losing at that stage. He wanted one personal and very private victory before the ultimate defeat...

"He wanted _her."_


	8. Reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thomas "Neo" Anderson is reunited with his devil.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For any regular followers of this series, these next few weeks are hectic for me so updates might be all over the place. I'm gonna try my best, fear not! But I have to go somewhere tomorrow, Thanksgiving is on Monday here in Canada and I have a sleep study next Saturday.
> 
> That said, I'm trying for a "Youngblood" Heaver entry for Canadian Thanksgiving. I was trying to think of the proper character to feature and thought of him and then forgot. My mind then focused on "Flying" for some reason until my sis reminded me. Thanks sis! He's perfect because he is flat out Canadian. That fits! :D <3

Erin had been sitting on the bed she had once shared with a man named Thomas Anderson, wet, cold and shivering for hours. Agent Smith was still partly inside of her brain, easily sensed though he tried to hide himself. He was like some seeping pit of tar and it seemed that one small, stray puddle of his essence had not rejoined with the rest of what he truly was. She could feel that aspect of him lingering like just another voice of her OCD and she wondered a little if it wasn't the man's curiosity which had chosen to remain in the end. It felt right to her that in the Agent's repulsion over her love for his enemy that it might hold a certain hold over him as well. It was like the ghost stories that people told each other or the car accidents which they sometimes passed and slowed down to gawk at. Part of them were horrified by them both, while some other hidden part waited breathlessly to hear what happened next or could not take their eyes off of the tragedy.

Agent Smith had been revolted by the love he had touched inside of her heart. Still he longed to play voyeur to it for a little while longer, trying to solve it or eradicate the unease it had left him with.

Maybe he was growing more human than he even suspected.

Her eyes remained focused on the 8 on her finger. The umbrella declaring her to be Tom's opposite of sin was gone but she still had the infinity ring. She studied the endless twisting loop and the small blue gems it was made of and thought of Agent Smith's hint that she was destined to see her lover one more time, at least, before the end. And if the man's word, informed by the Oracle, were not good enough on their own, Erin's lips moved in constant prayer to her God that Neo would find her to complete a goodbye they had never properly been given in the first place.

Rain was hitting the widow outside, this time not begging her to come out and play but to stay where she was, far away from a world full of Smiths whom might change their mind and make her one of them anyway. She would heed its warning, in no hurry to face the Agent again and possibly lose the chance to be reunited with the man she loved. In the cramped and run down building she felt closer to him anyway. If she were to die, she could choose no better place than the bed where she had let Tom take her for the first time to the similar pattering of the rain.

The apartment had not changed much since the last time she had been there, in truth. Anderson had apparently kept it very much the same after her departure and it felt as if she had never truly been gone, at all. The only real difference that hit her about it was how it had become typically messy in the usual male fashion, probably aided by the fact that the hacker was glued to his computer more than his vacuum.

There was a stack of dishes in the sink and Erin was afraid to go to them to see what was growing on them or which bugs the rotting food had attracted. Suddenly the image of a hundred little bugs all bearing Agent Smith's face stole her thoughts and she blinked her eyes, trying to push it away, preferring to believe that the world was fine and that everything was normal and not invaded by some guy in a suit. In her mind, on the familiar bed that had witnessed hours of lovemaking, both passionate and tender, listening to the rain falling against the window pane, she could easily fool herself into believing that Tom was simply at MetaCortex and that he would be coming home any minute, his bastard of a boss just having kept him late to tend to the paperwork that he hated.

Pretending, she pictured she had never left him and that she was waiting for him to come back home to her. Chubby fingers tracing the ring, Erin thought of Thomas' voice and she could almost hear it.

"Erin..."

Though her imagination was strong, the woman knew the difference between what was real and what was fantasy. She opened her eyes and saw Thomas "Neo" Anderson standing in the middle of the apartment, dressed in the long, black coat she had seen him in once before and wearing a pair of dark shades similar to the ones Smith had worn.

"Erin," he whispered again and she felt herself violently shake from the word. The vibration the two syllables caused hit the air, reaching her with staggering purpose. They arrived with the sheer force of having not heard the man's beloved voice say them in such a damnably long time, though, she had desired it more with every passing and unsatisfied day.

She blinked her eyes, fearing that it was all in her head anyway and that when she opened them again he would be gone. However, he remained standing there in all of his glory, staring at her through his shades and refusing to go away. Wanting, _needing_ to see his eyes, she smiled when he suddenly removed the glasses and threw them onto the computer desk, where they hit the mouse and moved it about an inch on its pad. Fixing her with a stare from his beautiful brown eyes, she gasped, her heart a fiercely beating, pounding fist.

"Tom..." she whispered. She wanted to run to him but her legs felt too weak. She could never make it but knew for certain she would only fall to the floor and then wake up to find out she had only been dreaming inside of another dream again.

Always knowing what she needed at any given time, the god looked at her lovingly and with understanding. "Come here, you little devil," Thomas Anderson coaxed, with his hand outstretched and a teasing little smile, and he brought her to her feet, like the lame man Christ had healed and earned the Pharisees' wrath in doing so.

Erin could not discern how long a journey her feet had actually taken until she was in her Neo's arms. At one point, they had touched the apartment floorboards and the next her body seemed to be flying across the room and into his embrace, just as she had similarly seen him take to the sky once.

Strong arms wrapping around her plump figure, while hers did the same around his thin one, they imitated, without even knowing it, the symbol on the ring the woman had been staring at in desperate hope and prayer. Erin jolted, feeling an electric sensation from his touch, twice as powerful as she could even remember. She experienced it again as the man began to kiss her, his lips betraying clearly that, though months had passed since their last meeting, he had not forgotten the feel of her own nor had he stopped longing for them.

A single kiss did not satiate his hunger nor a second or third. He was kissing her over and over again, making her feel dizzy with intoxication after a painful period of abstinence. And still the overwhelming, strange and powerful feeling lingered and grew that his touch was somehow different other than the overpowering fact that it marked their reunion.

Tom eventually moaned, a sound deep and low and as equally mournful as it was joyful and excited.

"You don't have much time do you?" she murmurred, resting her head against his heart while their kisses halted.

"Yes," he cried, holding her tightly to him. "People will die. Both inside of the Matrix and out of it too, Erin. You included. But I promise, on my love for you, that I won't let that happen. Just know if I could stay here forever, I would."

"She lied to me," Erin whispered as tears fell from her eyes. They were heavier than any she had ever wept in her life. The weight of the time lost had finally hit her and the horror of the sin that had been committed against them infused each teardrop with pain, regret and sorrow. Just as one lie had stolen the peace of Eden, the young woman knew it had wrecked Tom and her own happiness also. "I would never have left you any other way."

"It's in the past," he whispered, soothing her. "Just a nightmare. Close your eyes and know that. Better yet, open them and look at me. Hold this moment. Time doesn't exist."

Neo took her wet face in his hands and tilted it upwards to look into his as her warm tears ran down his hands. For a moment, she saw a flash of a bloody strip of cloth over his eyes and a background of wires and machines behind him. Then it was gone as quickly as it had appeared and he was standing before her again with eyes which were whole and filled with love. His hands on her cheeks felt more present in a way than she had ever experienced before while his skin felt more real somehow than it ever had before too.

She felt no longer lost in a dream but awake.

Tom was gazing down at her face, as if she were the divine one and not himself, and though his touch was as soft and gentle as the clouds he had ascended to, it created as pure a resonance in her soul as when crystal was struck. The sensation was growing to that of the sound made by a chorus of angels as he placed his left index finger's tip on her forehead to draw a familiar shape. As Thomas "Neo" Anderson traced the heart on her wet skin, Erin Kelly Smyth felt her soul burst in a realization as clear as crystal itself as well.

"You _found_ me," she whispered feeling his finger like holy fire on her skin. "Where I lay dreaming...you _found_ me, Tom Anderson."

The god man's eyes glistened and he nodded before he kissed her again with a fierce and unashamed hunger, beginning to make love to her inside both a dream and a reality.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear Keanu;
> 
> I was set to have a sleep study months ago before COVID19. It was to go with my blood tests which I finally had done last week and turned out to be vitamin B12 deficient, as I mentioned. Funnily enough, yesterday I watched "A Nightmare on Elm Street" where the heroine Nancy has one. And today, I worked on this fic which deals with dreams. I was kind of hoping they'd forgotten about it but today I got the call.
> 
> It's set for next Saturday. I could have had it this week but that was too short of notice for me. 
> 
> They're gonna be filming me for the whole night, Keanu! :/
> 
> What if I forget where I am in the morning and fart? :O
> 
> And that's on film!
> 
> I heard they'll have 800 pages of data which they'll study for 4 weeks after it's done. Sigh. I'm scared and shy.
> 
> What if I have a dirty dream? If I do and if it's with you (which is the only person I wanna have a dirty dream with) can I pull you out with me, mid dream, like Nancy does with Freddy's hat?
> 
> Can I please?
> 
> No. 
> 
> I didn't think so. 
> 
> Sigh.
> 
> Much love,  
> Erin  
> XO XO  
> :D <3


	9. Introduction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neo is taken to the pod where Erin lies sleeping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Getting a little bit non linear here.
> 
> Gotta shout out to Mystictopaz6293 for the references to Smith in the previous chapter! That was thanks to them! Not sure if you're still reading but thank you! :D <3

The group of tiny machines which were carrying him suddenly placed him on something solid and Neo felt what could only be a pod beneath him. It's surface was smooth and of glass, warm solely for the fact that a body was being kept alive on the other side of it.

One that belonged to him.

The docbot tending to the sleeping woman seemed confused and disoriented. It began to call out an alarm only to be silenced by the Deus Ex Machina. Some signal given and instaneously processed the noise stopped while the docbot lingered, almost protectively.

"Open the pod," the human said to the floating entity by his side.

"WHY?" the Deux Ex Machina asked. "DO YOU WISH FOR HER TO AWAKEN?"

"No!" Thomas Anderson exclaimed. "I want her to keep on dreaming."

The sound of the pod opening reached the blind man's ears as he quickly began to try to keep his balance on the pod while he began to remove his clothing. It once would have been a difficult task, Anderson knew, easily recalling his fear in stepping out of the window at MetaCortex before his taking of the red pill. Now, following his existence as a god, he had finally let go of his blindness in regards to fear reserved for physical pain or the chance of failure. The things which had come to scare him were those that you could never see...love, hate, joy, anger, apathy...these held far more danger than a broken leg or neck.

They were things you were forced to live through.

Erin had taught him that too.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" the machine asked in almost horrified awe.

"I'm becoming naked," Neo replied calmly. "Like she will be."

"YOU WISH TO REJOIN THE MATRIX!" the Deus Ex Machina exclaimed in outrage. "BUT YOU PROMISED TO SAVE US FROM THE ROGUE PROGRAM SMITH!"

Neo smiled. "I will keep my promise. But for what I need to do...this is the best way."

Holding out each discarded article of clothing, the human found them taken by the machines which had borne him there. When even his blindfold had finally been removed, Neo remained straddling the pod for a few seconds, the glass warm against his cock and balls but still not entirely pleasant. He thought briefly for a moment how, from a distance, it would look like he had a monstrous, glowing erection; one with his love trapped inside of it. It was a human piece of humor or erotica that would be lost on his current mechanical companion so the man kept the thought to himself, artistic though it might be. 

Crawling forward, he fell into the opened pod and brought its number from one to two occupants.

The gelatin surrounded Thomas "Neo" Anderson's lean, fit body and he recalled it quite easily too. Months ago, Morpheus had explained that the fluid was comprised of those whom had died within the Matrix and subsequently inside of their pods.

"They take that human body and turn it into that jelly like stuff. They then use it to feed and keep the other trapped humans still breathing and comfortable. Can you imagine? All of those blue pills lying there in the bodies of their brethern, reduced to a few billion packages of Jello and they don't even realize it."

At that point, Tom had wanted to reply with four little words, "Soylent green is people," but the Neo part of him had firmly told him to keep his mouth shut and his morbid humor to himself.

Now floating in the substance, and feeling his lover's body submerged in it, as well, he felt like both laughing and crying again. Whose bodies were Erin and he currently bathing in without realizing it? People whom believed themselves to be Doctors and lawyers within the world of the Matrix? Cops or teachers? Or vagrants and single parents trying to make ends meet at their local McDonald's? Whatever they had once been, they each were fooled and yet beautiful and he felt both guilty and blessed that it was in what remained of them that he was finally reunited with his love.

Neo's arms found Erin's body sleeping within the sacrament of the dead, and Tom held her naked flesh against his own. Kissing her hairless and gelatin coated face, he lifted her partly out of the fluid and into his arms.

"Erin...Erin..." he was whispering kissing her over and over again while his body slipped beneath hers and she came to rest comfortably in his lap, the wires and cords which connected her to the Matrix still safely in place.

"YOU ARE BLIND; HOW DO YOU KNOW IT IS HER?" the Deus Ex Machina asked, failing to understand how a human, even the One, could be so sure when his vision had been stolen.

"I _know_ ," Neo answered, adding tears to the fluid on his cheeks while he pressed his face into that of the sleeping woman's. "I know her from how she _feels_...how everything feels _right_ now that she's back in my arms.

Tom kissed the smooth, rounded top of her head and enjoyed the sensation of her buttocks resting against his genitals. Memories came flooding back with the power of a rainstorm and with the tenderness of the first snowflake drifting to the ground in the first sign of winter's approaching. He could believe in that moment that everything had been a lie: the world the machines had made to enslave man, the struggling existence of Morpheus and Zion.

Right then to him, the only thing which seemed to exist was the love he shared with Erin and that brief life created together, as well.

"BUT NOT EVERYTHING IS RIGHT," the machine intruded. "SMITH'S PRESENCE GROWS LARGE; YINE, OUR TIME, GROWS SHORT."

"Hook me into the Matrix to be with her, wherever she is" Neo demanded with serene yet forceful confidence. "Don't worry: I will remain conscious here at the same time."

"IMPOSSIBLE!" the Deus Ex Machina scoffed.

"For you maybe," Neo hissed. "Not for the One."

The light that was Erin's docbot returned and Neo felt the needed measures being taken...

until...

He was in a familiar looking apartment, wearing his black coat and shades, even as he was fully aware that he was naked and in Erin's pod. The place still looked almost exactly the same, including the sight of the wet woman sitting on the well known bed, trembling and weeping. He was used to his lover's dark spells, after all. All that was different was that the infinity ring he had intended to give her the night before her leaving was now on its intended place on her finger. He watched Erin playing with it for a while, feeling as if he had only just climbed up the tower after an extremely long day's work to return to her and save them both from the pain of their separation and loneliness.

"Erin," he said gently.

She opened her eyes to finally see him and the look on her face was better and sweeter than ambrosia. There was love in the eyes he had remembered so very well during his life as man and god. Joy was there also existing alongside gratitude. There was also fear and disbelief mixed within those good emotions. His lover desired to believe it was really him but was afraid by belief it would turn out to be nothing more than a fantasy.

So to convince her, he said her name once more.

"Erin."

The woman violently shook from the word and peered desperately into his dark shades for yet more confirmation. Knowing again what she needed, as he always had instinctively, Thomas "Neo" Anderson threw his shades on to the computer desk, where they hit the mouse and sent it rolling. He then gazed at her with unguarded eyes that both saw and loved her.

"Tom..." she whispered.

He could see her doubting her legs now, wanting to run to him but fearing that they were not strong enough bring her to her desired destination. She was still his Erin, Thomas then knew: a human whom held faith in God and Savior, Angels and miracles but whose hands reserved no room for belief in herself.

"Come here, you little devil," Neo coaxed with a teasing smile and a hand reaching out to her.

It was all that was required to give her the strength that she lacked.

In an instant, Erin was flying from the bed and into his waiting arms. As her own found their way around him, Tom felt that everything was all right once more, in that other world that he called her embrace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear Keanu;
> 
> I think I'll keep going with the butterfly/moth theme established from the Night Before fic...
> 
> I watched The Silence of the Lambs on Friday, the day before my sleep test. There have only ever been two books, I know of, that my mom ever destroyed in her life: Silence of the Lambs and Laura Palmer's Secret Diary. I remember her picking up a paperback of SOTL, at this little convenience store we hardly ever visited. It was during March Break 1988/89, or some other school holiday, and we were staying with my grandfather and she needed something to read.
> 
> I remember the inner cover with Hannibal and Clarice's hands reaching out for the moth in the middle. I must have been 9 or 10 and thought it was romantic in the dark way typical of Beauty and the Beast, which was always my favorite of fairy tales. I really wanted to read it. It lay around the house for a while before my mom started to actually read it.
> 
> Then she finally did.
> 
> She was so disturbed she placed it in the trunk of the car and poured gasoline all over the thing, including the cover that I loved. Which doesn't sound very safe, come to think of it! :O
> 
> For years, she would mention how horrible that novel was. It was infamous. When I read that they were making it into a movie a few years later, I told her and she flinched in disgust.
> 
> While I like the film, I prefer the novel. It's far more fleshed out, no pun intended. :/
> 
> On Friday, it struck me, though...Clarice doesn't really do that much, does she? Hannibal feeds her mostly every clue, its her friend Ardelia who figures out Lecter's last one, the dog leads her to the sewing dummy, Jack Crawford tells her to stay in Gumb's town and perform interviews and then the death's head moth flies into the room finally alerting her of the guilty man's guilt. :/
> 
> I think, Catherine Martin was more intelligent. She was stuck in that hole and she still figured out a way to get that dog down in with her to torment her captor. 
> 
> But poor Clarice...she just stumbled into everything with some other person or creature's help.
> 
> I enjoy the book's ending more too. Although, I suspect you probably like the movie's more. The film's is more scary and dsrkly humorous. In the book, it's just rather sweet. But you *need* that final line in it about Clarice sleeping peacefully in the silence of the lambs for the story to have that added punch. It's a case where something in written form becomes difficult to capture. I also miss Hannibal telling Clarice that some of their stars are the same. I said that once to a man that I loved very much. But I don't think it mattered to him. I guess, it is a sentiment that only matters if you care about the person sharing those same stars and he didn't.
> 
> Would you mind if I think of it with you now? I'm not sure if it's true but sometimes they *must* be...and once upon a time they most definitely were.
> 
> Back to the SOTL ending, though...I'm, at least, grateful that they kept Hannibal Lecter telling Clarice Starling that the world is more interesting with her in it.
> 
> That's how I feel in regards to you, Keanu. 
> 
> Much love,  
> Erin  
> XO XO  
> :D <3


	10. The Question of How, Not of Why (Part 4)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Architect and the Oracle discuss the human act of sex.

The Architect felt his face turning red as the Oracle sat silently in the chair across from him. She had finished taking a very long drag from her cigarette after recounting the story of how Thomas "Neo" Anderson had found his past lover and had made love to her in both worlds, the one inside of the Matrix and the world that lay outside of it.

Being one with the very machines that had brought Neo to the sleeping woman in exchange for his help with Smith, the Architect had been forced to watch the whole event from the power plant, waiting until the One had finished what the Deus Ex Machina and he had then realized had been his secret plot all along: to have sexual connexion with his lost love one final and yet first time before his perceived termination.

Remembering it, the program had become increasingly uncomfortable by that singular memory more than any other which had been recounted. His defeat he could process and begrudgingly accept, the Architect now realized. Although he had come to discover how it had happened, and was still confused despite the woman's endless nonsensical explanations abd ramblings about an otherwise unimportant love affair between two simple humans, a red pill and a blue, he was still unnerved by the act that he had seen on flagrant display before him in the pod filled with gelatinized humans. The Architect had witnessed it occur sometimes inside of the Matrix but never before in the flesh.

So to speak.

And though he was not a prophetess as the woman he had come to seek answers from, he could still see her next question coming from a million computations away.

"So what did you think of the whole thing?" she asked, her eyes twinkling at his blatant discomfort.

The Architect squirmed in his chair. "I thought it was ridiculous," he replied.

The woman sat back, her lips lowered in an insincere pout and her eyes widened. "Ridiculous...that's a word that sounds strange coming from you. It's almost too creative."

He frowned aware within his programming that she was right. Crude, unnecessary, biological all would have served his meaning better than something which sounded like it had been invented by the red pill Lewis Caroll. "Our way of creating human life is far more efficient than what I saw," he stated, ignoring her truthful remark and trying to slip back into what suited him. "We are always assurred of success and we dispense of the exertion and mess."

"But they don't just do it to create life and they quite enjoy the exertion and mess" the Oracle teased. "You were designed by a human. You bear his image; is there any bit of memory inside of that white head of yours that remembers that and the other reasons why they do it?"

"Machines are not men," the Architect replied testily, thinking of memories stored and barely looked at. While the humans found their delight sometimes not only in performing the act but watching others perform it, he had no similar inkling. At least he had not before seeing Anderson and the human female that he had inexplicably desired to be united with in such a ludicr...

Such an _base_ fashion.

"I have vague memories he left me with to try to achieve some foolish form of immortality within my existence. But seeing is not understanding. And I must confess, thst the human I am based on was not a highly sexual person. He wisely sought his pleasure in the world of wires and codes, a far more sensical universe."

The Oracle tilted ger head to the side as if the news did not surprise her. She shook more ash from off her cigarette and smoked it again in that all too human way.

"Most humans do it because the need is in them. The urge starts in puberty and it feels so damn good they can't stop themselves. If it didn't there probably wouldn't be a human race and we wouldn't be here talking to each other. We came from them, after all. We didn't make ourselves."

"Whatever could have thought of that vile way of reproduction?" the Architect found himself spitting out and resulting in a blush claiming him again in his anger and that other far more embarrassing emotion which had no place whatsoever in his programming.

The Oracle outright chuckled this time. "Many people have come to me and I've been asked many questions...but leave it to the god of all the Matrix programs to ask me what the God of all humans was thinking of when It came up with the design for sex."

Her chuckles turned into boisterous laughter and the Architect watched in shock as she reached over and placed her free hand on his shoulder. He was annoyed by the act because he had not anticipated it, it seeming, once again, far too human for his liking and how it felt wonderfully good somehow. When she puuled her hand back, the Architect inhaled sharply relieved and bereaved all at once.

Hearing the sound of the curtain rattling behind him, the Oracle's guest quickly turned to catch Sati peeking in once more, trying to learn what had caused her guardian's laughter. It was obvious the young program hoped it was regarding the secret the two females were withholding from him. But with a quick look exchanged behind his turned head, the Architect knew that the Oracle had given a signal to the girl that the secret wasn't the cause for her mirth and Sati's face soon disappeared.

"I am grateful I offer you so much amusement," the Architect grumbled in severe invitation.

"Take it as a compliment," the Oracle suggested. "For something built to foresee everything, seeing someone whom cannot see anything is wonderfully disarming. We fit together, you and I. It's a shame I don't see more of you."

The man was close to a sigh, wishing he was back in his room at the source with all of his momitors simply watching and manipulating again.

At the thought of his voyeurism, the image of Neo lovingly caressing the body of his lover returned as he prepared to take the woman asleep in one world and awake in the other. What upset him the most, the Architect now realized, was how at the time he had been horribly disgusted by what the One was doing with the blue pill woman, now he was beginning to find himself growing curious about so many things besides the simple why.

Now he desired to know what it had felt like for the two lovers and to understand the sensation also.

If the Oracle could read his true question, she gave no indication but merely, returned to the conversation. "Neo did it for the reason that many humans do it though: because he _loved_ her. Humans need to be touched; they need to offer their touch.Tom couldn't die without touching Erin one last time and being touched by her as well. Skin to skin. Whether he went to some void of nothing or some paradise with _everything_ , if he had that one note to go out on then his whole life would seem a symphony. Because he had loved her one more time. It was his obsession: to know her and to be with her. Maybe Neo thought if he could enter her, be inside of her that last time before his death, that he would never truly have to leave her again; that a part of him would remain with her as long as she existed."

"Preposterous," the Architect remarked and earned another bemused stare from the Mother of the Matrix.

Only this time, the amusement seemed to exist side by side with a certain bit of triumph.

It was the same cursed triumph he had witnessed written all over Thomas Anderson's essence as he had made love to his sleeping yet wakeful devil, Erin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear Keanu;
> 
> I'm not feeling very well. The vitamin B12 doesn't feel like it's working and the CPAP is driving me kind of crazy and not helping much either. 
> 
> I wasn't feeling all that great beforehand but now I feel even worse. I can't help but feel like a cartoon character. You know, those ones (like Wile E. Coyote) that walk over a cliff and they are perfectly fine until someone brings it to their attention and then they start falling.
> 
> Today, I had to go out to pay bills and before I left something happened to make me feel bad. But then when I looked in the mailbox, the cushion I designed and ordered from Redbubble with you on it had arrived.
> 
> And a few steps later there was an orange and black caterpillar crossing my path on the sidewalk! I haven't seen one of those in ages! It was the fuzzy type and reminded me of the fic I finished for "The Night Before" on Saturday, where your character was a caterpiller. 
> 
> Those things made me happy. God's thumbprints and you there to give me strength and courage and heart. So, I thank God and I thank you too. And with that cushion, now I can hold on to you when I'm sad or feeling discouraged and remind myself not to look down.
> 
> Much love,  
> Erin  
> XO XO  
> :D <3


	11. Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erin and Thomas "Neo" Anderson make love.

Time.

Time always seemed to be against her.

Erin thought this as she looked into Neo's eyes, their act of love beginning. They confessed to her that he did not have long, that there were worlds to save: both his and the one belonging to her.

Time.

It was always running out on her, as she had once been forced to abandon the man that she loved. Summer holidays passing away too fast, early school years spent with the boy she had loved before her family had moved away, years spent with her grandfather, loving him but aware that he would not be with her forever. And now Tom returned to her with God whispering through his eyes that he would be with her barely long enough to fufill her need for forever.

But then, Erin thought, there would _never_ be enough time. All you ever had was the time you were given and the opportunity to receive it with gratitude.

And to make the most of it too.

Their lips found each other's again. It was not a shy kiss. There was no time for shyness now. The kiss told of years of pain and absence, of longing and restlessness. Maybe that was what made the human souls placed in certain bodies always feel the urge to keep moving, she mused, as she opened her mouth and accepted his tongue inside of her. They felt as if they had no home anywhere so they kept trying to search for it in vain like some hurricane never staying still long enough to not be destructive. Together now, though, the restlessness was wonderfully satiated. Tom's arms were her home and her embrace was his. It was the sin of others that they were never permitted to stay there for too long.

But Neo yearned to enter his own home deeper. His hands journeyed to her buttocks and cupped her cheeks, lifting her effortlessly, while her legs went around his waist.

 _"He lifts me like I weigh nothing,"_ she thought absently in amazement. _"As if I'm one of the clouds I saw him ascending to the day he left the umbrella and the ring. Of course, I'm not really. It's just the other me, the one in his world that carries all the weight. In this world...well it might as well be my mind he's lifting, my thoughts or my soul...and I always heard that last weighed no more than a chocolate bar."_

He was taking off her rain soaked pants, revealing her unshaved bush, which he ran his fingers through in loving familiarity. Her body responded by the touch and also the memory of it. It had grown addicted to the fingers of Thomas Anderson during their all too brief time together that she fell into the receiving of another hit with a only a sigh to signal the fall. Sensing her high, Tom repeated the action after which he clutched the mound, letting the bottom of his palm push against her quickly swelling clitoris. The action made her moan and part her legs instinctively, allowing the man to place his head between them and taste her.

Just as the soul weighed no more than a candy bar, Neo was enjoying her like she was the only type that he truly had an appetite for. The dark beauty she had known to be his lover after was swiftly forgotten when faced with his full hunger, Erin fully knowing he had been starved of her alone.

She started to make the small noises that he could always elicit from her during their lovemaking. Shy as she was, Erin had always known that the man could make her easily vocalize her pleasure. It had caused him to break out of his own shell all of those months ago. She now lay back on the bed crying and moaning in alternations to the feeling of the man's lips and tongue on her, her shyness still as discarded and unneeded as was the pair of pants dripping rain into the slats of the apartment's floor.

Every touch from Neo was intensified in the world of her being by the knowledge that what he did to her within the Matrix was done to her true body outside of it, as well. It was electric, more powerful than anything the most complicated machine could ever mimic.

Yet, for all of the swirlings, suckles and licks it was a simple kiss which finally sent her over. Thomas Anderson kissed her throbbing bud and the lightest pressure from his lips caused her own to build to past her breaking point. She experienced the first orgasm that had not been caused by her own actions in the duration of their separation. She wept as the fierce spasming occurred and Tom experienced it with his face still pressed into her.

When he raised his head, he met her eyes before his gaze traveled lower to her breasts. She knew what he was about to do but wanted to please him for a few moments beforehand, seeing his hardness making his black outfit form a peak. Sitting up, her hands went to undo the fabric only to find that there was suddenly no clothing to undress at all. The man was kneeling before her, naked, with his erection on display and now easily accessible. He wanted her lips on him and her own fingers, Erin realized, but knew there was little time to bother with something as trivial as his clothes and the removal of them.

She did not ask how he had done it. How gods and saviors did _anything_ was a matter left unknown to man. Often humans tried to discover the method and found themselves drowning under contradictions or the belief that that there was still left for them some explanation for a miracle they had not yet found; until their inability to accept became a weakness they could never admit to because it made them only human.

The miracle now was the man before her, himself, and she would not waste her time in understanding Neo's mysteries.

She would merely gratefully and blissfully experience them instead.

She brought her head to the cock and wrapped her lips around it. Her fingers found the shaft and it rested against her palm warm and smooth. Oh how she remembered the feel of it! And her hand and mouth fell in easily with the varied pattern that had always aroused him. As she worked him to the stage where his precum fell upon her tongue and slid down her throat, too much collecting there, she listened to his own sounds and felt his fingers stroking her head and playing with her hair. He had liked to do this when she was down on him, enjoying her curls, which were made even more pronounced in their dampened state.

"Mmmmm," he praised in pleasure, a warning for her to stop, also, before he came.

The time they had been given would only permit that specific action once, it seemed.

Rising to her own knees, Tom kissed her neck, letting his teeth graze it impossibly gently and then pulled her wet top off from over her shoulders, where soon the bra was loosened and slipped off as well. Neo did not use the same manipulation of the Matrix when it concerned her as he did with others or himself. Erin knew that he did not wish to control her, accepted her now just the same as he always had: as herself and something he did not wish to change but only desired to love her as she was.

Naked together now completely, the god man and his devil woman, they fell to the bed in unison, his head going to the breasts he had just freed and whom welcomed his return.

Writhing in pleasure, Erin remembered how long it had taken for her to shown them to her lover. She remembered too the first time when he had accepted them too and the wonderful feeling, just like now, of his lips and tongue all over their vast, imperfect landscape.

The first time.

A first time to go with the last time, which this most surely was, she thought.

 _"That was what you thought the last time,"_ the voice said inside her mind, Tom bringing his kisses higher after which she tasted herself on his tongue. But she did not know whose voice it was this time. Her cursed OCD, this time saying what she wanted to hear, messing her up even more or only her own hope. 

Then again, it might as well be God, reminding her that she was not the Oracle and could not predict the future.

Only if it was God's voice did it really matter, for then she could be sure of it.

The god she was more physically familiar with was situating himself between her legs, spreading them further with her help to prepare his entry. His finger caressed her slit, trailing to the bud that was already coming to life once more, and then kissed the spreaded folds and the thighs as she found herself making another sound of pleasure. His fingers rubbed her erected nipples, teasing them as he quickly kissed her clit again, making her back arch.

Looking at the two of them both on the bed, Erin was struck by the image of their flesh in stark contrast to the materialism of a room that wasn't truly material at all. The man's skin was beautiful and luminescent, the cold computer screen reflecting it behind his back for her to view in wonder: human captured seemingly inside of the monitor.

The rest of the room suddenly hurting her eyes, Erin focused only on her Tom, her Neo, about to return to the place that had left him one very similar night.

With one slow, deliberate thrust he made his return and she called out, instantly reaching another climax with his re-enty. His mouth found her nipple again and sensuously suckled it and she watched the trail of his spit fall from one breast to another like a bridge between both pink nubs, his intent and success to wrap his lips around the other.

"Mmmmm.....hmmmm..." she said in rapturous delight as Tom began to slide the swollen cock up and down within her, always going deeper with each movement of his hips until he had reached her womb and as far as he could go.

Her hands went to his ass and stroked it before grabbing it hungrily, trailing down to the balls on the other side.

 _"He'll be coming soon,"_ she thought. _"And then it will all be over..."_

But that was something to come not that which was now.

Her hands found his back and she suddenly was moving her own hips, using the part enveloping her lover to stimulate that part of his body with her own smooth action. She made the god cry out in ecstasy and his mouth returned to her large chest for a quick kiss of the nipple before a longer kiss of her parted mouth.

"Tom," she murmured his human name during a brief separation of their lips and her precious lover then kissed her ravenously again.

When she knew he was moments from coming, the realization did not make her sad. Knowing it was something natural too, she was prepared for it with her whole heart and soul, to the point that the third orgasm he had gifted her with took her forcefully and her body began to call his seed out.

Thomas "Neo" Anderson cried out loudly as he violently came inside of her. With instinct her hands tightened around his back and she held him tightly, sensing he needed the closeness of them then in that moment, knowing it was possibly the last seed he would ever plant within her in this exact existence and life.

He kissed her repeatedly during his coming, which seemed to last a blissfully long eternity. Small, quick kisses, long ones full of passion. It was during one of these that his spilling finished and the final lovemaking which marked their reunion came to its end.

Though he obviously still needed to leave, Neo grasped on to her afterwards, holding her as if he wished to pull her whole body inside of his own. Erin started to weep then from their impending loss, an act which was as intense as their mutual climax had been.

"Hold on to this moment," her Tom told her before he went off to play god, Christ and sacrifice one last time too. "Time doesn't exist. When you need to, close your eyes and find yourself back here and in my arms."

"Tom...I don't know if I'm that strong," she whispered and kissed his chest, tasting tears mingled with sweat.

"You are," he reassured her, kissing the top of her head. "Just stay inside of the Matrix. Keep on dreaming, Erin, and I will always be with you."

She smiled sadly. "An agnostic telling me he knows that there's life after death..."

"Yes," Neo answered. "If _you're_ alive, yes...and if there is anything that comes afterwards, we go to it together."

Erin kissed his chest a final time and then looked up into Tom's face, her own wet and covered in tears. "I love you, Tom," she said, knowing their time together was close to ending.

"And I always loved you. Even when I hated you, I still loved you, Erin," he confessed in return, as if he was dead even now, and kissed her trembling lips, declaring also that he would still love her well beyond the end of time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear Keanu;
> 
> Yesterday, I finished my fanfic "Tail" based on "Zootopia." It was my most widely read fic here but it comes nowhere near to what the works in this series mean to me.
> 
> I watched "Lady and the Tramp" tonight; the original, not the remake. Something struck me, which has struck me in the past too, considering the difference and years between that film and "Zootopia."
> 
> I feel like the animated films of the past hold a simplicity and innocence that is missing today. That doesn't mean that they are not intelligent and clever; it only means that they are most definitely *made* more for children than for adults.
> 
> Something happened along the way. It's like the filmmakers forgot the children. Their thoughts seemed to turn to how they could amuse the parents too. Maybe because they became the filmmakers or because the parents whined so damn much.
> 
> I remember People magazine complaining about films like "Care Bears" or "My Little Pony" in my youth, saying it was hard for adults to *endure* them. Even Rosie O'Donnell complained constantly about the "Pokemon" movie and the tv show "The Big Comfy Couch," acting like they were so childish. 
> 
> But that's what they were supposed to be.
> 
> They were for children. Why were the adults so selfish they forgot that fact?
> 
> Adults have their own films. Children should not see them. Likewise, children should have their own too. It's fine to mix them a little but now they are so full of adult oriented humor it's hard to tell whom they are directed towards.
> 
> And it also makes me wonder if it isn't also making kids grow up a little too quickly.
> 
> There is childhood and there is adulthood. While adults should remember the child they once were, it seems a sin to force some of the darker elements of adulthood on to children, whom will grow up soon enough. 
> 
> Some have grown up far too soon in this cold, hard world as it is, and there will be more who will as well, and I wish to God that I or someone else could have protected them or protect them. I feel like children are being forgotten when it would be better for us all to remember them and the beliefs they hold onto before they are stolen or fade away.
> 
> Much love,  
> Erin  
> XO XO  
> :D <3


	12. Sustain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thomas "Neo" Anderson makes one final plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I'm trying to reach the goal of having written 900000 words for this series in a year. I have until Dec 22nd, and I have to minus the word count from two fics. 
> 
> And what do I do?
> 
> I add a chapter that is only about 600 words to this particular entry. :/
> 
> But that's what was needed. It needed this length, this brevity, to give it it's own power. I'm a big believer of not dragging things out and I wouldn't hurt my vision for this tale by trying to reach a quota.
> 
> So, here's a very short chapter but a good one, I hope! :D <3

Tom looked down at Erin and brought a finger to her forehead, wanting to leave her with a heart placed on her forehead, the symbol which had always brought her some form peace. He knew that this was goodbye and the knowledge was almost destroying him even before his confrontation with Smith. His upcoming sacrifice was in a way inconsequential, he understood: already he had died twice in one day.

As the tip of his finger touched her skin, he felt her own touch his. A small touch, starting in the middle of his lower forehead and working it's curved way to the side, a dip in the middle and then the shape reflected. They marked one another with the heart at exactly the same time, knowing of the pain they would soon be facing, and the breaking of each of their own.

It was funny then, aware of that suffering, that they only could offer each other a smile as the hearts found their completions and the act was over.

The man left off on her smile.

On making her happy.

Neo brought his lips to her forehead, where he had placed his heart, and when he pulled back it was to see darkness.

Back fully in the pod, back with his love's true body, one which he had known intimately for the first and last time, he brought his hand to her face and felt that it was wet. But from what? The gelatinous remains of strangers? Tears that had fallen from her eyes in a dream and which had found their way to reality?

Or were they his?

The blindfold across Neo's eyes had been removed at the same time a pair of dark shades had been discarded within an illusion. Yet his eyes were so badly damaged and blind could he even cry anymore?

Thomas "Neo" Anderson knew the answer although he was blind. Yes. Even if his tears were now made of blood, they were still tears.

They were not the only blood shed either.

"SHE IS BLEEDING; YOU HAVE HURT HER," the Machine lord stated, processing the fact that the sleeping human female was wounded from the loss of her virginity.

"Yes, I have," Neo said softly and stroked her cheek.

Her head fell towards him, resting in the crook of his neck and shoulder and he kissed the top of her hairless head before letting her go. Moving away from Erin's body, still connected to both the Matrix and his own body, like she was the rope in some strange tug of war, the man knew it was an act which made him feel more guilty and bereaved than any previous other moment in his life. He had to lose this game and he let himself slip out of her in defeat. Neo felt her sinking back into the fluid behind him and wondered how she was surviving within the Matrix now that she was once more alone. The thought haunted him as he redressed as quickly as possibly, finding even the piece of cloth that served as his blindfold being handed to him by a doc bot. He had known it would, foreseen it already, as he also understood what was the only true outcome of his battle with the rogue program turned virus.

It had already been predicted in his mind and plotted out. That was what made gods and soldiers: the ability to understand; the capability to plot out the next required move to secure victory.

"NOW YOU GO AND FACE SMITH," the Deus ex Machina demanded.

"One last promise," Neo asked, turning his head in the direction of both the sleeping woman he loved and the machine he had no strength left to hate.

"NO MORE DEMANDS!" it boomed in anger. "YOU HAVE RECEIVED WHAT YOU WANTED."

"My body," Anderson continued, ignoring his companion's wrath and denial. "When it is over...place it here...in with her...whole ...preserved. For _always_."

The giant machine contemplated this for a moment. As most things in existence did, both flesh and metal, it saw the request, at first, only in relation to itself. "BUT YOU WILL BE OF NO USE. YOU CAN NOT FUEL OR HELP POWER US WHEN YOU ARE TERMINATED."

Neo looked at the machine, his dead eyes now covered but seeing it all the same. Gazing down lovingly at Erin again, he calmly, _purposely_ replied. " _You_ won't be the one that I am sustaining."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear Keanu;
> 
> Sigh. My mind is messy this Christmas season. Which is fitting because it's supposed to blizzard tomorrow.
> 
> Remember how I made out those Christmas cards and it was like the memory game? Well, I failed. I was trying to remember the name of one Lesley P's son. I made out the card to her and Simon. Only afterwards did I remember her son is Josh. Simon is her ex. :O I don't think she would have appreciated that. Luckily I caught it in time. :/
> 
> Remember, too, how I'm a Mandalorian fan? Well for weeks I have made it a point to call the little green one the Child and not Baby Yoda. Well, he officially has a name now: Grogu. And what do I do? I can't stop calling him Baby Yoda! I told my sis I bought a Baby Yoda t-shirt from Giant Tiger! He's called Grogu and while the world had moved on I'm stuck on Baby Yoda! Repressing it must have done me in. Maybe if he gets a last name, Grogu will stick.
> 
> I have a dilemma too.
> 
> Now in November, when the Christmas season was weeks away, I asked myself if something happened what I would do. I promised that if it did I wouldn't need any Christmas gifts. Now that thing might or might not have happened. Today a friend gave me some Christmas cash...what do I do? Did a dream come true or didn't it? Should I put the money towards bills or charity because I got what I wanted...
> 
> Or did I not, so I should pick myself up with, at least, a few gifts?
> 
> Right now the money is in my wallet where it will stay until I make a definite decision.
> 
> But, you know, I'm so happy writing these, I honestly can't think of anything else I want anyway!
> 
> Much love,  
> Erin  
> XO XO  
> :D <3


	13. The Question of How, Not of Why (Part 4)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Architect has a meltdown in the Oracle's kitchen.

"And did you feel anything as you sent that poor boy off to his death?"

"No. It was necessary for the survival of everything he loved and all which I had created."

"I often have to ask myself...do you love what you have created? It's something I can't even know."

The Architect contemplated it. Design. He had been as much a part of it as the creations; his own design had been to build the Matrix and then to keep it running. Regardless of the predestination, there had been a certain desire to keep the whole clockwork existing because it had come from him, being his design and his construct. The Matrix was his child as much as anything ever could be, he had calculated long ago. Although, he had many programs, which could be considered his offspring, none were to him as precious as Sati had been to her father and mother and now was to the Oracle as well. Perhaps it was like a rat having sired too many children to differentiate or care any more for a single one. The Matrix had become his conglomerated child in lieu of parenting them all one by one.

But was his feelings for it love or was it simply pride?

Emotions were so blastedly confusing. How humans dealt with them was a mystery to him. They were more complex than codes and seemed a virus in unto themselves, more damaging than Smith could ever have hoped to be.

He wanted to process it longer but the Oracle was staring and every second spent under her unblinking eyes was just as irritating as not knowing what his programming was requiring...making him experience.

"Maybe," he replied and bristled, hating having given so unsure and flesh and blood of an answer instead of one absolute and made of harddrives and wires.

"Do you feel anything now when you think of Neo leaving that poor girl and going to his death?"

Yes.

This the Architect knew for sure.

He felt like crying.

The answer was complete and whole. He held no doubt where it was concerned and thus experienced outrage all the more for it. How could he have gone from a designed apathy regarding a single human's death, one whom had betrayed him by straying from the program, to feeling such intense sadness? He had kept his promise to place the dead man's corpse in with the sleeping woman. Even now it was being made sure that Neo was preserved and left undisturbed in his stalled decay, but it had been born from obligation more than because he wept for the tragic fate of the two lovers.

It was only as he had been listening to the whole tale between the One and his false devil that he had thought of the man's sacrifice and his heart had begun to break a little. It had been a small, miniscule crack in the beginning, one which had spread and grown, until now he was fighting off tears at both the strory and at having been confronted with his own weakness and illness.

"I feel broken," the Architect confessed, unable to look the woman in the eyes at the spoken revelation. The words were true; the outcome of Neo's defeat of Agent Smith and the return of the Matrix to some semblance of normality as those whom had decided to leave had been set free and those whom had chosen to stay had done so too. "I have felt broken ever since you have received the victory you have long strived for," he stated further. "Everyday I find some new delineation in my programming that I cannot explain and that leaves me more broken and unsure."

The Oracle offered more of her blasted sympathy. "That's what losing does, honey. Just understand this, we learn more from our losses than we ever do our victories."

The Architect saw her hand rest upon his, so beautiful in shade and color against his own not unlovely pallor and he felt attraction and repulsion burning at once. Her touch was wonderful: what Thomas Anderson and his lover had shared often while as both the Deus ex Machina and the Architect he had been denied.

Still it was unprogrammed...unnatural...for a machine.

For so long, the designer of the Matrix had tried not to fall prey to the illusion he had created to keep the humans content within their prison. He saw things as codes, for the machines that they were, simple equations. Now with the dream of her skin touching his, it felt like the lie might turn out to be the truth in the end, after all.

The Architect could not take it...he felt his systems being overloaded and suddenly felt sympathy and envy for the dead man named Neo. Blind as he was at the end, he had been spared of seeing life as both human and machine, with the vision at its full strength and with all of his senses intact. It was a madness he would not wish on his greatest foe, be it Zion, Agent Smith, Morpheus or the One.

Unable to process it, the Architect rose to his feet, broke free of her hold on his hand and then slammed both of his fists down on the table in uncharacteristic rage. He kept the thread of his fury going at full velocity while he began to shout, "I WANT TO KNOW HOW, WITCH! HOW DID YOU DO IT? SHE DEVIL, HOW HAVE YOU MANAGED TO CHANGE ME? THE MAKER OF THE MATRIX?"

Sati was laughing from the other side of the curtain, the sound as pretty as it was irritating, for there was some amount of beauty and comfort to be found in a child's voice, even if the owner was finding amusement at his sake.

The Oracle, however, could not share her wards laughter. She was looking at him again with the same regret she had shown at having lied to the two humans whom had loved one another in a contentment they had found inside of a dream.

In fact, she was staring at him as if _he_ were somehow the woman named Erin, the one she had thought she had bereaved of her happiness forever.

"You'd better sit down again," the Oracle warned, somberly. "You aren't going to like this..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear Keanu;
> 
> I saw a photo of you with Hugh Grant at an event. It made me smile because I had just mentioned Grant in one of these notes last week.
> 
> And then I saw you with Richard Pryor before that too. I'd been talking about him with Tara a few days before. I was saying how it was funny, but when I was younger and even now, I identify with the dumb, bubbly blondes in things more than the smart girls sometimes. I'm not unintelligent, but they were/are the ones I identify with. I think it's because they usually are kind and sweet and those are two traits that I hold higher than brains. 
> 
> Oh, and they're sexy too. Sigh, I want to be sexy. 
> 
> But, anyway, I was mentioning how it was similar to how Richard Pryor was hired to work on the Blazing Saddles script in order to give a black perspective, but the character he loved was Mongo. That was his guy: the big, sweet, dumb villian turned good guy whom is white.
> 
> So, when I saw you with Richard, I smiled too.
> 
> I keep forgetting how you probably know everyone out there in the biz. I don't know why, but I do.
> 
> Did you know Harold Ramis? He was a fan of the first Matrix. And I know you often were in movies filmed in Chicago. If you did, I hope he was nice. I don't ever want to mention someone who was rude or mean to you. I've heard so many talented people are real assholes. Stephen King used to be bothered how he'd meet people he had admired and they would turn out to be pretty bad jerks. 
> 
> I care for you so much, I don't want to hurt you.
> 
> I feel like people don't like me sometimes.
> 
> I received an email today from the main relative I talk to over in the UK. For some reason, I never feel that they like me as much as they like my sister, Tara. And I can't understand why; I'm the one who talks to them. Even she said she'd put it off and forget about it if it was her doing it. 
> 
> When the relative's husband passed away I did a sketch of him for her. And two sketches of two babies when they were born for another relation. But I just feel not as liked. Maybe the art really sucked? I don't know.
> 
> I feel it most at Christmas. It started a few years ago after the art was sent. Two necklaces were sent to us as gifts. Tara's was pretty: a red heart. Mine was the same...except it was a heart that was black. :/ I got upset but my mom and sister just acted like I was mistaken and overreacting. Then I felt twice as bad and beat myself up, telling myself that I had been bad to even mention it.
> 
> Only after mom died, my gifts became even worse. Two bags were sent. Tara's was a beautiful teal silk, with embellishments and a zipper. Mine was a piece of canvas with a rope. :/ The next year, Tara received a small little elegant bag filled with jewelry and perfume while I got an umbrella. But that time I didn't mind so much. I have an umbrella fetish! :D
> 
> Last year, Tara's gift had a tag with her name. The tag on my gift was left blank. :/
> 
> And today they put her name first in an email. That's small but I was the one to write the email. And whenever I try to say that my feelings are hurt I can't because then Tara gets upset. I keep telling her, I'm not mad at her; I'm hurt at the situation. But it never really sinks in and I have to drop it to make her feel better.
> 
> Sigh. Well, anyway, at least, I'm pretty sure I didn't overreact that one year. I have that to hold on to anyway.
> 
> That and a canvas bag with rope and an umbrella. :/
> 
> Much love,  
> Erin  
> XO XO  
> :D <3


	14. Rain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erin laments fair weather.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An extremely short chapter. 
> 
> You gotta believe me! This isn't laziness but intentional! I always knew that these last few chapters were going to be short. It's the way that it feels right and what is necessary for the story. 
> 
> Quick like heartbeats and leading to its final one.
> 
> A shoutout to T.S. Eliot, by the way, whom helped me with the ending! :D <3

Erin lay on her back listening to the rain. She had not moved since Tom _(Neo)_ had been with her ( _inside her._ ) She dreaded the moment when she would need to, fearing she would then lose inevitably a little of what her lover, her man, had left inside of her. Before she had allowed to fool herself into thinking he may come for her someday.

But that time had passed; it was over now. He had left her so he could sacrifice himself, as seemed the lot of any worthwhile savior.

And she was painfully unsure if this intimately known messiah had any resurrections left hidden up his sleeve.

Erin would not let the tears come so long as it was raining. As long as they were there, Erin knew her Tom was still breathing. So each raindrop was treasured; each fallen drop becoming sacred.

The woman, naked and raw, resented once again how she had been tricked into leaving the man and she hated how she had been left behind. Was his dark goddess alive also or would Neo be joining her in death before she could join him.

Jealousy claiming her, Erin stared at the ceiling, listening as raindrop after raindrop smashed against the pane of glass in the window, as if they were all parts of Agent Smith too now, having changed his mind and wanting to assimilate her once more. She tried to appease her thoughts, finding their bitterness sacrilege to the memory of the man whom had just made love to her. She clung to what Jesus' words had been to the resentful, envious Peter concerning Christ's intent towards John, the beloved: _"If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me."_

But she was Neo's John, Erin thought in sudden joyous release, freedom from an anger caused by loss more than any real hatred towards the beautiful dark raven.

She had been Tom's beloved.

The proof was drying on her thighs, just as his commandment to stay inside of the Matrix was kept in her heart, including the one traced on her sweat covered forehead. He had loved Trinity, she could never make herself believe that he hadn't, nor did she want to. But she had been the one he had turned to before he lost everything.

Erin knew she had been the last request and hope of a dead man.

"I love you...I love you, Tom...I love you, Neo," she said, close to a hundred times each, unsure if she had said them enough while he had been with her. It was her OCD most likely, coming back in Tom's absence.

They had _shown_ one another how deep their love ran; that would have to be enough. 

The rain suddenly stopped in and act which felt like something being switched back into place; the false world rebooted after the virus of the hollow army of Smiths had almost destroyed everything. Now only three things inside of it had been lost forever, Erin feared and understood: Thomas "Neo" Anderson's life, the heart of the woman whom had loved him and the world they might have shared together.

She closed her eyes, the sound of the rain replaced by the loud beating of that same broken heart and her wailing. And though the rain seemed to only move from out of the sky and to Erin's tightly closed eyes, it made no sound this time as it slid down from the corners of them, proving that at least one world reached its end with no bang but a whimper.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear Keanu;
> 
> I wanted to write a letter to you desperately yesterday because I was afraid of today. I had my Doctor's appointment at 11 and I was nervous. Only, I couldn't write because my anxiety was so bad and it made it into one of my "No Win" days.
> 
> But I think it worked out for the best. I don't think I could have written this chapter yesterday and I think it turned out better than I could have hoped for. I was wondering only the other day how these things would turn out if written on different days or any story ever created for that matter. Infinite possibilities right there. But I still don't believe in alternate universes. I think it's fun to imagine but I truly believe we all only get one chance and this is it. So every decision is important.
> 
> Although, right now, I wish I could go back and change a few things about my life. 
> 
> A few years back, I started to diet and exercise. I did very well and lost about 50 pounds. But when my mom died, I couldn't focus on it. Eating became my solace and I put some of it back on. Anytime I tried to diet again after that, or exercise, I never lost anything! And that was an hour worth of exercise a day sometimes.
> 
> Now I'm kicking myself because when I talked to the Doctor she sounded worried by the end of the conversation. That didn't relieve my own worries any. Usually they try to be friendly...She seemed distracted. I'm set to have my bloodwork done again but also will have an ecg machine placed on me and a stress test performed. 
> 
> Tara's worried too. But, at least, I'm looking after it. And all I can do is be happy for each moment I have. Futures are only ever pipe dreams, right? You can never be sure...so I'll center on today. And right now that means getting this chapter up and closer to being completed and writing to you. Which means so much to me and makes the day a good one! Yay! :D <3
> 
> Much love,  
> Erin  
> XO XO  
> :D <3


	15. Sunrise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Losses and victories.

Dying for a second time came all too easily for Thomas "Neo" Anderson. Having gone through a death already, he realized that, maybe he had become used to it in the end...at the end. That was the problem with humans, after all. They became _accustomed_ to certain things, like a sunrise or a lover's smile; after seeing it too often, so it soon lost its glow. 

In their own way, humanity let themselves become machines each in turn, living out their existences without seeing the gifted beauty and grace: the _life_ in it all.

Neo heard Smith throwing back the Oracle's words to him and understood what he must do.

He had to sacrifice himself to destroy his enemy.

No. It was even worse.

The One knew he had to sacrifice his _self_.

What scared Neo was this loss of his identity.

Too many times it had happened now, where he had been pushed into becoming something else to appease someone else's notion of the greater good. It was his own notion now too.

But still...

To ask a soul to become that which it wasn't was asking far too much.

Yet, he allowed it to happen, willing to accept this final violation to save both man and machine. Especially the one whom he instinctively felt was lying on a bed, in a certain apartment, listening to the rain falling outside in perfect time with her tears.

He focused on the first girl Thomas Anderson had ever truly loved to prevent his complete annihiliation and so that the human part which remained would not feel so damned frightened. He pictured her smile, the all too brief sunrise in a lowly hacker's life, outside of codes and wires.

The man, the god, the savior's familiar life then ended.

His mission concluded.

Not to be a god at all, but the dream of any decent man: to save all that he cared for.

And all that he loved.

* * *

The rain stopped, dawn approached, and yet it took Erin some time to gather the strength to rise from the bed in imitation of the sun. She performed the action in two distinct stages: the first found her sitting at the edge of the mattress. There she remained for minutes, feeling in chaos, thinking without direction. When she finally stood it was to dress slowly before walking into the world her sacrificed lover had helped to save.

There were people outside now; real individual souls instead of only the same false man. But knowing she would not see her Tom amongst them the victory was bittersweet and, like usual for her shy nature, she could barely bring herself to look into their eyes. Instead, she walked around aimlessly, holding herself and wanting to be alone since it was the only fate she saw waiting for her.

The grieving woman's feet brought her to an area at the edge of the city where there appeared to be a park and water, trees and the city skyline.

A black woman sat on the bench and seeing her, Erin hesitated and stayed back out of her sight, not longing for company or its undesired pleasantries.

 _"I should know her,"_ Erin thought, studying the stranger's kind face but not knowing from where they could have met.

A man appeared suddenly and walked towards the sitting figure on the bench. Erin watched as the man and the woman talked in a way that was familiar, if not exactly warm. They were both of similar age, the woman a beautiful shade of brown and the man exceedingly white. They were studied during the short duration of their visit, their voyeur staying hidden, for she was afraid of being seen. Still they fascinated her, daring Erin to suffer the risk of discovery. They seemed important somehow to her life, connected for a reason intrinsically _felt_ but similar to one of Thomas' computer codes: completely alien and indecipherable to her.

They made a good couple actually, she thought, the longer she stared. Life was like that: at its finest often in contrasts and differing shades.

Abruptly the man left, turning once in his departure to talk with the woman some more before leaving. Erin stayed where she was still too shy to approach the stranger whom remained.

A flash of beautiful colors were cast on the woman's face as if fireworks had been set off without the intrusion of noise and Erin looked to the sky above the water to see the most striking and breathtaking sunrise she had ever seen; the second one of the day. It defied reality along with whatever you could ever hope for of dream of. Shortly after the appearance of the sunrise, a man with a small girl came walking towards where the woman sat.

All three considered the miracle in the sky, the girl proud of it as if it had been her own handiwork, before they eventually left.

On their way, the old woman glanced in her direction and Erin felt her heart stop as their eyes met.

Besides the glance, the stranger offered her a sad smile and then looked away almost in guilt.

Truly alone now, Erin walked towards the now empty bench and sat down where the woman had been seated seconds before. It retained her heat and Erin accepted it, holding herself again for loneliness was all too cold a feeling she had learned. She stared at the sunrise, feeling herself falling into the multitude of colors that it offered.

While it was beautiful, however, it could not heal the broken heart inside of her.

She closed her eyes tightly in sorrow and in pain and held onto the memory of her love.

 _"Hold on to this moment. Time doesn't exist. When you need to, close your eyes_ and find yourself back here and in my arms."

In an instant, she was back with Tom in their apartment. It was the sensation of empty loneliness being replaced with all of the love they had felt and given to one another during their time together. Whether the time had been months or years, it was what they had been blessed with and what they had made the most of.

Erin opened her eyes and saw the colors of the sunrise burn afresh.

"Oh Tom...it is really beautiful, isn't it?" she asked, crying and smiling at once.

There passed two seconds, nothing more or less offered by time, before Erin felt a hand gently resting on her shoulder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear Keanu;
> 
> BRZRKR! I absolutely loved it! I'm just gonna say what I said at the kickstarter page here too incase you didn't read it:
> 
> "I just finished reading BRZRKR #1 and am more than pleased with it and excited to see where B is headed on his journey to mortality. That is such a strange thing to write! Most people are searching for the opposite. I loved the beginning glimpses into the characters' backstories, and also their characters themselves, as well as the story and pacing. It flowed honestly and made a natural progression. Facts were revealed when they should be until the last page which had me wanting more. And the artwork was absolutely beautiful, capturing the action, violence and emotion perfectly. Well worth the wait and Bravo! everyone! :D <3"
> 
> "What did I like best about issue #1?
> 
> I loved everything about it. Everything was perfect, from the writing to the art. I liked the flow of the whole thing.
> 
> Specifics without getting too spoilerish:
> 
> A certain wound sustained in a vehicle...
> 
> A laugh made over advancement during a session...
> 
> The juxtaposition of B being offered "sustenance" then and now, including blood being drawn instead of the proper kind of nourishment.
> 
> Those were what I liked best."
> 
> And specifically to you, Keanu Reeves, I want to tell you again just how proud I am of you. That you are such a private and shy person, insecure by your own admission, and still able to share of yourself with people and to risk all that goes with that frightening act of sharing with the world what you put your heart and soul into...I do not know where you find the courage. And yet you do and I am immensely thankful for that.
> 
> You are brave and talented, Keanu, and I know and mean that with all of my heart and soul and hope you know that one day too.
> 
> Much love,  
> Erin  
> XO XO  
> :D <3


End file.
